Full House, Toddlers, and LTWs

This entry starts my blog-as-I-play experiment. As I write this after playing through all that's below, I have to say that so far this way of doing it is going a lot easier than the way I did it before. Mostly I'm writing things down as they happen, sometimes making comments about the action or about thoughts on things that occur to me as I play, and sometimes throwing in a few storytelling-type bits. The narrative may be a bit choppy at times, but there's not always a whole lot to say about a particular event, so I hope you can bear with me. Comments on how this plays out with the presentation are welcomed below if you care to leave any. Now, on with the narrative.

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With Dylan's birth, I now have a full house here, and it's getting just a wee bit crazy to keep up with all of them. I've only myself to blame though, really, but keeping up with so many sims makes me a bit crazy. And I've no idea what I'm going to do when it comes time for generation 4 (Damien and Dylan) to want to procreate. The two branches of this family will only fit in the one house for so long. Hopefully one of them won't show much interest in getting married/having babies.

Currently, everyone in the household except Byron and the babies needs to get their LTW still, and it's a lot to keep track of. When there's nothing that a particular sim really needs to be doing or working on, I let them do as they please, and just keep an eye out that they don't try to shove the toddler who just woke up back into the crib just because it's 11PM. Or give the toddler in the high chair a bottle while someone else is already working on grinding food up for them (didn't catch that one in time). It's like TS2 baby-swarming all over again the way they all want to put the kid to bed or feed him all at the same time.

Anyway, the next evening after Dylan was born, Charles celebrated his birthday and became an Adult.  It had little effect on him.

After he finished celebrating and everyone ate the mac and cheese that Carolyn had just made, I eventually managed to get everyone directed into other actions besides trying to put Damien in his crib. Most got sent to bed, but Benito stayed up to work on teaching Damien to walk since he wasn't all that tired yet.

Byron was up early the next day, and Kesha's ghost was out, so I decided to see if they were still so smitten with each other. Apparently they are, for even though she shows as being simply his fiancée now, they had most all of the higher level romantic interactions available to them right away. I had them hug and kiss a few times and then watched to see if they would continue on their own, and they did. They flirted a bit, then Kesha offered to give him a massage. Such a sweet couple.

Since Benito doesn't have a career-related LTW, I haven't had him get a job, at least not yet, so that he has time to concentrate on his chess games. Since there's usually plenty of people around to watch the little ones, I send him down to Central Park to call over the next ranked players. So far he's been doing pretty well and continues to make progress. I've no idea how far he has to go yet.

While Benito was at the park that day, everyone else had the day off, so Jeanna and Rigoberto headed into the rec room to work on their athletic skills. They each paced themselves so they could work out as long as possible, and while they were doing so, Rigoberto mastered the Athletic skill. That went very quickly since he didn't have any skill in Athletic when he moved in.

Working out is a stinky business

Later that evening, it was time for Benito and Jeanna to celebrate their birthdays. Both were transitioning to Adult. Benito had his first, celebrated alone upstairs in Charles and Jeanna's room while he was headed to the shower there, and Jeanna had hers later on while watching TV with Charles in the living room. It's rather annoying the way it resets their hairstyle when they make this transition.

One side note here on something I've noticed. I was going through cleaning out all of the garbage memories in their various scrapbooks, and I realized that despite the fact there are currently 5 ghosts on the lot that come out regularly, and they see all of them, the only one they ever get a memory about seeing is Beau Andrews' ghost. I'm fairly sure that they react to the others when they see them, but they don't get a memory each time they do like they do with him. I'm not sure why this is, just thought it was something interesting. I'm likely going to have to create my own cemetery for them on another lot before too much longer, since the ghost population will be at 7 once Byron and Rigoberto go, and that many ghosts might start interfering with things too much. I'm thinking that Beau will be one of the first candidates to get moved so he quits cluttering everyone's scrapbooks with repetitive junk memories.

Once everyone had gone to bed, Benito worked some more with Damien on teaching him to walk, and late into the night he finally succeeded.

The next day started out fairly routinely with nothing out of the ordinary happening. That evening, however, Charles earned a promotion at work and had finally realized his dream of becoming a Celebrated Five-Star Chef. Now to figure out what to keep him busy with the rest of his life...

He doesn't look all that thrilled about achieving his dream, does he?

Later that night, Benito managed to get Damien Potty Trained finally. For some reason, people were wanting to congregate in the bathroom at the same time.

The next day passed relatively uneventfully, though Byron did manage to finally get in enough hours tutoring others in skills to get the Skill Professor Logic achievement. He'd found Benito in his bedroom and explained some Logic theorums to him figuring it might help him with his chess strategies.

A little while later, it was time for Dylan's birthday. Benito picked him up out of the child swing where he'd spent most of his infancy and laid him on the floor. A few minutes later, Dylan transitioned to Toddler.

The next day, Byron worked with Damien on learning how to talk, and finally got him talking understandably.

Meanwhile, they were all working on getting Dylan potty trained when they had the chance to, and later that evening Charles finally had success with it. He was happy to have have been the one to teach his son such an important life skill.

That puddle keeps showing up in this bathroom and I can't find what's causing it

They were in full toddler training mode now, trying to get the boys taught their skills before they grew up (and before I forgot to do it). By now, Damien was pretty much set, this just left Dylan, who'd already learned the potty chair. Next up was having his grandfather teach him how to talk.

It was a good thing that Damien had gotten all of his skills in, because the next night he had his birthday and became a Child. He picked up the Insane trait. This should be fun.

He looks a lot like his daddy

Charles worked with Dylan on teaching him how to walk late into the night until he just couldn't stay awake any longer to do so. Jeanna continued working with him when she got up, and before too long he had gotten the hang of it.

Benito continued working his way along the chess circuit, beating one opponent after another. He did his best to get in at least one game a day, sometimes even 2 or 3 games depending. Before he knew it, he'd become a Chess Grand Master and was halfway to fulfilling his LTW. The toughest part of it was done now at least.

Not the actual match that got him the Grand Master title, but I forgot to take a picture of that one

The ghosts continued to be active, but usually didn't make too much of a nuisance of themselves. The main thing that was annoying was the way the sims would stop what they were doing  to make a face at the ghost if one wandered into the room with them, or if they walked into a room where a ghost was doing something. Some nights only one of them would come out, but it wasn't uncommon for several to be out at once, as in the picture below. There would usually be at least one of them hanging around until well into the morning before they'd poof back to their grave.

Kesha, Hank and Morganna were out this night

Usually they all did their own thing while they were out, but one morning I happened to notice Kesha and Hank talking in the rec room. They never met when they were alive, because he'd died before Byron became engaged to her. Whether or not she ever met his ghost while she was alive, I don't remember.

Later that day, Carolyn got promoted to Creature-Robot Cross-Breeder and completed her LTW. Now to decide what to have her do to keep her busy and earning points...

She looks as underwhelmed about achieving her dream as Charles did

That night, tragedy struck when the Grim Reaper came for Byron just after he'd finished helping Damien with his homework. His children and at least one grandchild were all there to watch him join his beloved Kesha on the other side. Byron contributed 19 points to the challenge during his lifetime, bringing the total to 56.

Byron Medina's Achievements

Traits Artistic Genius Handy Loner Vegetarian Careers Grocery Clerk (part-time) Sports LTW Perfect Mind/Perfect Body Miscellaneous Own a Venue Hold an Autograph Session Have a Wedding Party

Skills Athletics Body Builder Fitness Nut Marathon Runner Charisma Everybody's Best Friend Logic Skill Professor Painting Brushmaster Proficient Painters Master Painter

Damien decided that night that he wanted to be a Star News Anchor when he grows up. I'm not entirely sure what triggered that LTW for him, but it sounds good to me. Meanwhile, Grim wandered into the living room to play a bit of the football video game they had before he headed back to the Netherworld.

Jeanna seemed particularly upset by Byron's passing, and she stood out by his grave that night screaming and cursing the fates that had taken him from them.

Next up: Rigoberto, Benito, and Jeanna continue to pursue their LTWs and Damien and Dylan continue to grow.