Oh balls ...

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As my kids have aged, it's led to phone conversations with the in absentia parent. Sometimes these are brief, parent-initiated calls, and sometimes they're more involved kid-initiated calls. I've called them at their dad's several times, wanting to say hi, only to hear them say politely "no thanks" when he asks them if they want to talk to me :)

But miss a kid-initiated call, and you'd think they actually saw you purging their toys while they were away. I've had several whining messages from Bean on my voicemail when I miss their call. I can hear her dad in the background, trying to talk Bean off the building's edge when mommy doesn't answer.

Yesterday was one such message, so when I called back, Bean had tons to talk about, including the request that I pick her up. It went much the same with Miss O, who insisted that I could come pick her up. As my conversation with her reached it's (mercifully soon) end, I asked to talk to her sister again.

Miss O: Okay, bye mommy
Mommy: Can I talk to your sister?
Miss O: No, you've already talked for her. You haven't talked for my daddy.
Mommy: That's okay. I'd really like to talk to Bean again.
Miss O: (firmly) You already talked for Bean, and you've already talked for me.
Mommy: (realizing the only way to return - as promised - to Bean) Ah, okay. Can I talk to your daddy?
Miss O: Daddy - come talk for my mommy!

In the car the other day, Bean was thrilled. She'd read the required 15 books in October to score a free Pizza Hut pizza. Her dad called to say hi, and she told him about it.

Bean: Daddy, I got a pizza coupon for reading 15 books! I'm going to take mommy to dinner!
Daddy: That's great! Next time we can go to dinner ...
Bean: Only if you marry my mommy.

Thankfully, I'm not held to the same standards. No-one tell her the certificate is only good for a personal pan pizza, okay? She's very excited about paying for dinner, and told me "This time you don't have to spend your money - I'll pay for dinner!"

Today's foray into cooking is muffin pan meatloaves. This is a serious win, because Miss O likes meatloaf but won't eat meatballs, and Bean likes meatballs but won't eat meatloaf (I seriously cannot make these things up). This way I can market the same product to my two disparate audiences: "Look! A big meatball!" and "Look! A personal meatloaf!".

I also used this to sneak in some veggies; jarred pasta sauce has veggies, and some of the newer baby foods sneak in some of the more exotic veggies (seriously, what typical American diet kids actually eat lentils?) Another cool thing about small-scaling? Way easy to freeze daily portion sizes.

Muffin-Pan Meatloaves/Meatballs

2 lbs protein (I used 1.25 pounds of 93/7 ground turkey and .75 pounds of 85/15 naturally-raised ground beef)
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
1 3.5 ounce package Sprout Organic Baby Food, Pasta with Lentil Bolognese, Stage 2
1/2 - 3/4 cup Ragu Organic Traditional Pasta Sauce
1/4 - 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Mix all the ingredients together. I actually did it in a gallon zippered plastic bag to shield myself from the dreaded "raw-meat-under-the-nails" syndrome, but, alas, when it came to making the balls, I had to sully my manicure.



Form into racquetball sized balls and drop into a standard muffin pan. This recipe made ten big balls (I loved typing that) - you can experiment with the ball size (giggle) and cooking vessel that suits your whims.



Cook at 350* for 30-40 minutes.



More sophisticated palates than those my children possess may note the blandness of the recipe and the sauce. I zinged my serving up with basil, oregano and garlic salt and it was nom-a-licious. If I were cooking for people to whom a McNugget was not haute cuisine, I'd have used onions, garlic and tomato paste. But the lentil Bolognese wasn't noticeable at all - I'll probably step that kind of element up on the next go-round.

(My conscience dictates that I note I'd really prefer not to use conventionally-raised meats, or even meats at all for the most part. But as I'm cooking for two picky kids on a single mom income, sometimes I just have to go with what works. Once I've got a couple rounds of this in the "accepted by both kids" pile, I'll switch to locally-raised, pastured meat. Another aside: my 5-year-old will eat, by the pound, these eggplant meatballs, so if her sister would deign to try them, that might be all I used.)
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You got to learn how to play with others.

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Woot!

Did y'all see my boy Brett play on Sunday? Not bad for an old ma, huh? And Percy's 101 yard kickoff return ruled, too. What? What? I'm not supposed to be all up in the Vikings' bidness? I'm a Packer fan? Yeah, yeah. You show me the day that Aaron Rodgers is as fun to watch as Brett Favre and I'll remember my place. I promise. Totally screamed like, well, like a girl watching Brett play yesterday. The Pack? *yawn*

I got my girlies back today, but they came back to me all congested and coughing. Bean's eyes are all purpley-red from lack of sleep, and O had a nose full of boogers. No fevers, thus far, and dave thought it was allergies all weekend, so we'll see. Don't think I'm not loading up on vitamins as a precaution!

Heh. I could hear Bean over the monitor and she was whining "stop!" I go in to check and she's rolled herself into O's crib where O was probably trying, in vain, to get the big lummox outta there.

Bean apparently had a sucktastic behavior weekend at her dad's, then ramped it up a notch when she punched a boy that was hiding behind the teacher to get away from her. (Don't think I didn't have a fleeting moment of pride that she punched a boy and a fleeting moment of pity for said boy's dad when he finds out his son got clocked by a girl. While he was hiding from her.) They made me pick up the incident report in the office, because she spit on him too. *sigh*

On a positive note, tho, when I picked her up, her teacher said she had a great day, but that there was an incident report in the office. She gave me the details, but did at least start with Bean having had a great day. When I picked it up in the office, my initial impression of the new director was not so great - she couldn't spare a smile or kind word for Bean or for me. I get that hitting and spitting aren't cool, but c'mon -the girl is like 4.25 years old and she's allowed some screw-up latitude. And I'm a nice lady. You can't smile?

Anyways ...

Ironically, I was telling friends this weekend that Bean's behavior with me was much improved. And she was great with me tonight, as well. Dave said she was defiant, laughed at him or ignored him when he disciplined her, etc. I'm not sure why her behavior is so different from house to house ... I have some thoughts, but I'm still tumbling them around in the great big open space above my shoulders.

Any other "two homes" parents reading? Do you see similar kinds of behavior differences from house to house, even without dramatically different parenting styles? Dave and I are different, but it's not like polar opposites different ...
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That's okay, Mom ... we don't need anymore snacks.

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Yaaawwwnnn ...

After two pretty good nights of sleep, O hooked me up with one of those 'up every couple hours' nights that leave me absolutely exhausted when morning comes. At 5:00. Joy. But, it's Thursday (can I get a w00t! ??) so at least I have a decent nights' sleep to look forward to. I'm pretty sure her problem last night was gas, as she'd wake with quiet (for her) screams and a lot of back-arching. She had a bit of soda with dinner, so the carbonation might have gotten to her.

Work is still going really well and I'm still really liking being a working mom. Miss O is doing really well at daycare, generally only getting upset in the late afternoons, and then mostly because of a classroom change. But she's eating and napping well there, playing with the other kids and enjoying all the arts and crafts. Bean is doing great with full-time school, as well.

Grandma and Grandpa wanted to come over for dinner one night and see the girls, so I asked the to pick up the girls from their school on Tuesday. Miss O treated them to her "I cannot possibly be separated from mommy" routine, screaming any time she wasn't in my arms. When I screamed back at her, I'm sure my folks were impressed with my control and mad parenting skillz, but whatever. Sometimes you just need to scream. And for that reason, I'd give O a free pass on *some* screaming, but when it's just a non-stop thing, it wears on me.

Speak of the Debil, I can hear her coming. Unlike my toe-walking Princess, Miss O is a whole-footer. 'Course, she says less than 10 words, so there's always a trade-off. But you can hear O coming for miles as those chunky little toddler feet slap on the tile and laminate floors. This time she needed more to eat. She and Bean scarf down Flat Earth chips and bananas in the a.m. And share a piece of dark chocolate.

Bean just Id'ed my cousin Rebecca on Facebook, and said "She lives in Wiscaansin. That's how you say it." Ummm ... "Who told you that?" "My dada. I tried to tell him it's Wisconsin." *Did* he now ...

Bean's been having a really hard time with the 'two homes' thing lately, and acting out a bit as a result. Dave and I have both noticed it, and heard comments about it, and it's really nothing that can be fixed - it's a simple physics problem of the two of the three people she loves most in the world never occupying the same space. She can have me, Miss O and her, or daddy, Miss O and her, but not mommy and daddy and her.

We talked a little about how in the future, we can both attend things like games, recitals, etc so Bean has us both there, but now here's little opportunity for those more informal type things. And I'm not even sure if having both Dave and I at, say, a park with her right now would be a good thing or just make the vast majority of the time when we aren't in the same place that much harder.

Divorce, and two homes, is a hard thing for a kid. For Miss O, it's been her reality since she was, like, 5 months old, so she really doesn't seem that affected by it. I think the separation from mommy is hard, but it's hard when she goes to daycare, when I leave her with grandma and grandpa or when she stays with her dad - that's just an age-appropriate, is-what-it-is type thing. But Bean remembers one home, remembers mommy and daddy together. And maybe, for her, it's really becoming real, now that it's been a year that we've had the two homes deal, and she's accepting and mourning on a subconcious level, and acting out about it on a conscious level.
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