Page menu in header

I cannot seem to find a place to list pages or categories on the first view that a visitor sees. They only get to the sidebar by eventually clicking on a post. In order to make a home page, contact us and site map, I had to create posts for those, then create a thumbnail image that literally says “click here for home page” for example. This is not pretty nor ideal. I need to have a page list in the header and also a category list there then change those three posts to be pages.