Yes, it is funny to see the teacher who had to buy the fruit with her own money reappear as Steve's obsessive mother. Merrin Dungey was originally just hired for the part of the teacher in the pilot, but when MITM went to series, they liked her so much they gave her a recurring role as Kitty.
She went on to become a regular on Alias and then another show after the first few seasons, so they wrote her out by having Kitty abandon her family and then reappear later in the series after she was tired of her wild life.