Pot Pies

Since I am not Super Mom and can't actually do everything by myself all of the time...

On my way home from work one day I found it necessary to have my 10 year old daughter start dinner for our family so that everyone could eat before rushing off to our various meetings and practices that evening. I called home on my cell phone and carefully talked her through (what I thought) were all of the steps in putting some pot pies in the oven to bake:

1. Turn the oven on to 450 degrees.
2. Take the pot pies out of their boxes and place them on a cookie sheet.
3. Carefully place the cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven.
4. Close the oven door.

Simple really, what could I have missed?

When I arrived home, I checked the oven to see if all was well and to confirm that dinner would be ready shortly. Instead, what I found were four pot pies placed on a cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven - upside down!

This is the way my daughter was always served her pot pie (my having inverted it to remove it from the pie plate as I placed it on her plate). It never occurred to her that they did not go INTO the oven like that, just as it never occurred to me to tell her to put them on the cookie sheet face up.

That's what I get for NOT being Super Mom and relying on my family to help out! :)

By the way, if you flip the pot pies over with a large spatula they turn out fine, the top crust comes out nice and crispy!

Not Super Mom - Just Mom

I recently realized it's ok to NOT be Super Mom, at least it's ok to Just Be Mom some of the time.
There was a time in the not so distant past that I would have stayed up until 2am baking homemade cookies for my son's school party because I had to! Now that I'm Just Mom, I know it's ok to grab a bag of chewy chocolate chip cookies from the grocery store and send those instead (the kids like 'em just as well, if not more!). The guilt of being a working mom and trying to compensate for my own lousey childhood has matured, along with me, into an understanding that being involved, stable and aware is more important than being Martha Stewart.
I once came home feeling like a horrible mother because a stay at home mom I knew had been talking about how she liked to have a plate of warm cookies ready for her kids when they got home from school. Every chance I got, if I had taken a day off or was staying home with a sick kid, I would have that warm plate of cookies ready and waiting when my children walked through the door. Turns out, it didn't matter to them that much. Turns out too that stay at home mom had an affair that ended her marriage to the father of her children. So, they still get warm cookies but have to live in two homes. I think my kids would pick stable homelife over warm cookies any day of the week!
So, while I still tell my kids I'm Super Mom (and really, they never need to know otherwise) I know in my heart that I'm Just Mom and that's ok. Keeping my eye on the prize means keeping my family in my heart and as long as they get cookies it doesn't matter if I made them or not!