2.27 Bustin’ at the Seams

Time passed so quickly that nobody was really ready when Adjo spontaneously aged into a child.

The prospect of two adults, two elementary-aged kids, a teenager, and an um ghost living together, a three-bedroom Victorian, no matter now lovely, started to feel incredibly cramped.

The Samples hastily began house-hunting for something with a bit more room. They happened on a contemporary home on a cliffside lot overlooking the sea.

Zahra admittedly had a lot of voice in this decision. She was more level-headed, and her parents were pretty frantic to get the extra space. All the artsy-fartsy quaintness of the Victorian had really started grating on Zahra (who can’t stand art). The modern home was just about as bland inside as you could get. Everything, and I mean everything was done in eggshell and brown.

Still, it was a great place, and a great space, and they could redecorate at their leisure.

Layla stayed behind to sell the old house while Lance moved the kids into the new place, where there was actually enough space for the beds Shanni and Adjo were going to need to sleep.

Once everyone was settled, they held a late-night, family-only celebration of the twins’ birthday.

Lance and Layla bid each other a temporary farewell.

It would be hard to sleep apart, but they’d be able to reunite in a day or two when all their affairs were in order.

It actually only turned out to be one day. The Victorian sold like a hotcake. Then Lance and Layla got busy making the new place their own.

(What really happened here is that Layla had a really high-point gardening wish that was just about to be fulfilled. I put off moving the family into a more appropriate-sized house for twin children in hopes that the last plant would mature and fulfill the wish. But Adjo aged up earlier than Shanni for some reason, and I had to get them into someplace with an appropriate number of adult beds before nightfall. I decided to keep Layla in the house until the wish was fulfilled, using a standard hack to let them keep their wishes as I switched between houses. But somehow I managed to screw it up ANYWAY. Layla lost the wish, so the whole finagle was completely pointless, so I moved her into the new house the next morning.)

2.26 On the make

May20

(Hey. It’s been a long time. Like, almost a year to the day since I last played Sims 3. About this time last year, I learned I was pregnant. Now I have a lovely 5-month-old baby girl. I recently got the Sims bug back, and I’m going to see if I can pick up where I left off. We’ll see.)

Life gets into a fresh routine for the Samples. There’s lots to teach the new new toddlers.

Cycl0n3 helps out when he can get away with it.

Zahra isn’t much of an extra mom, but she does take some time to get to know her new much younger siblings.

Shanni’s first word is, “dragon.”

I see an active fantasy life in her future.

Adjo, on the other hand seems to be the marrying type. Hmmm.

(Note from the future: Wow, the twins’ first words TOTALLY forecasted their adult personalities. Like, with eerie precision. Ha.)

Zahra’s school chum Fabian invites her to the park for a date.

They stay out late talking about the best sorts of geek stuff.

But in the end, perhaps they’re better off as friends.

Cycl0n3 is on the make, but the prospects are not great for a man in his… unique situation. One of his ranked chess partners turns out to be especially hot.

It’s not too hard to direct their meeting from business to pleasure. This is a party girl.

When the time is right, he makes his move.

Denied. Ouch. At least he beat her at chess.

At least Zahra and Cycl0n3 understand each other.

2.25 Death Takes an Evening Out

May10

Lance took some time to drop by Julian’s place one evening to congratulate him on his new marriage.

His new bride Elaina, however, turned out to be a whole lot of do-not-get.

It would be possible for Julian to have fallen for a creepier woman, but it was hard to see how.

Seriously. And with Rachel madly in love with Sunset Valley’s ganglord, maybe this corner of the family was just a lost cause.

(The Ursine family trait seems to be Mean Spirited. Jared was Mean-Spirited. Perhaps his baby-momma Claire was too. Rachel is Mean-Spirited and Friendly. Julian is Mean-Spirited and Good. WTF? Both of them appear to have Evil spouses. Also, it’s not at all clear how old Elaina is. She looks Elderly, but she didn’t seem to have the normal Elder stoop. She might just be an Adult with randomly-chosen gray hair. For whatever reason, she and Julian have no chosen to breed as of this writing.)

Elaina and Lance took an instant dislike to each other. Lance made his excuses and hightailed it out of there. Julia, old pal, was just going to have to come visit at the Sample place.

Layla, OTOH, got away from baby-wrongling to spend some of her maternity leave in the garden. She counted the days until she could head back to work.

And it finally came!

On her first day back, all of her coworkers rushed out to the pavilion to witness a terrifying sight. One of her coworkers had given up the ghost, quite literally.

The Grim Reaper did his solemn duty.

Then, his job done, he changed into a dinner jacket and had a nice dinner at the bistro.

(When he walks he kicks up clouds of black shadow too.)

2.24 No, THIS is the Best Birthday Party Ever

May9

In due time, a triple-birthday came up. Zahra was turning into a teen, and the twins were ready to be toddlers.

Zahra had spent most of her elementary school days trying to attract the attention of Laura, who never seened to be interested in getting to know here. The afternoon of her birthday, she finally got Laura to come home with her.

It was a disaster. Laura didn’t like geek-talk at all.

And she was utterly creeped out by Cycl0n3.

That was just a deal-breaker. Nobody was allowed to diss Cycl0n3 in her presence.

Layla threw a big formal shindig for the triple birthday. Mostly, she invited her and Lance’s friends, including Layla’s dear Antonio Bauer, Kyra the amazing maid, and Rachel and Julian Ursine. But she did invite Fabian Branch, who had made it to high school just before she did, and Rachel’s son Jess Ursine. They pointedly didn’t invite Rachel’s second husband Harvey, a now legendary town gangster and all-around creepy guy. Rachel’s taste in men was just epic. Her enormous pink formal gown was doubly-epic.

They gathered about the birthday cake while Zahra blew out the candles.

At which point Julian discovered that Layla had set the grill on fire.

Layla? You’re supposed to be the responsible chef!

Lance was up on the nursery, entangled with the bables this time. Nobody who discovered the fire could do anything but panic. In fact, Jess Ursine fainted dead away. Cycl0n3 was his own brand of useless.

Soon it was a raging inferno that threatened to catch the house itself on fire.

Zahra, completely upstaged by the hellfire in the back yard, aged up alone.

She then raced to the back yard with a fire extinguisher, called the fire department on her cell phone, and got to work on the flames herself.

She’s a level-headed one, our Zahra.

And Kyra arrived!

Followed by Lance. All three of them attacked the fire to get it under control. It was a real father-daughter bonding moment.

After everything was under control, two (!) firemen arrived and admonished them to be more careful. No kidding.

With a big chunk of the back yard a smoldering cinder, Layla hastened to get the remaining guests, i.e. those who hadn’t already fled in terror, back into the house. (?) was never going to speak to Zahra again, but that was OK because the feeling was mutual. Fabian didn’t run off, and he was still her friend.

Cycl0n3 did his part by challenging Julian to a ranked chess match, during which time they did nothing but blather about the fire.

Zahra changed clothes, retrieved her glasses (forgotten by the age-up), and redid her hair. Much better. All that mauve didn’t really suit her.

Layla and Lance brought down the babies for their hopefully more sedate birthday.

First Shanni.

With change of clothes, she looks like a heartbreaker in the making.

Then Adjo.

With his change of clothes.

Awww….

(Not bad, either one of them, though they needed new clothes. The bald look suits Adjo, I think.)

2.23 Ghost-Boy Helps Out

May7

Cycl0n3 was just a babies kind of guy. He doted on Adjo and Shanni the same way he had doted on Zahra when she was that size. He dashed in to care for them ahead of their parents.

He cuddled and snuggled them whenever he could, which didn’t always please Lance and Layla.

And sometimes he flubbed it up.

When they kicked him out of the nursery, he tried to help them in other ways, like making sure there was food around the house when the parents didn’t have time to make it. The problem was, he was a lousy cook.

One day, he tried to make waffles for breakfast and produced cinders. So he decided to try for mac and cheese.

And set fire to the stove. At least that was marginally less stupid than birthday candles setting fire to the dishwasher.

And here they learned something about the maid, Kyra, who they’d hired when they got overwhelmed by childchare.

She’s a pretty good gal to know in a pinch. She and Lance made a pretty good team.

Of course, that didn’t help the poor stove much.

Man, the Sims and their cooking fires.

2.22 Dead Things are Cool

May5

With hard work and dedication, Zahra managed to find a kid as geeky as she was. Sure, she had to stalk him at school and track him down at a neighborhood cookout, but Fabian Branch was eager to talk about science when she got him cornered.

Especially space stuff.

But the truth was, ghosts were far more interesting. She started staying up late to catch her grandparents’ spirits when they decided to hang out.

She and Connor got along swimmingly.

He never seemed to tire of her geek talk.

(The Sim Gods decided to shave Connor’s beard *again* when he died, and now I have no way to fix it. *Sob*.)

She was incredibly excited to meet Susie, too. At last, after death, Susie could meet her granddaughter.

Sadly, they didn’t seem to find common ground.

Oh, well, some things are not meant to be. Maybe grandmotherhood wasn’t a big dream of Susie’s. Or maybe she just didn’t get geeks. She led a perfectly happy life with the goals and family she had.

(It’s impossible to get a screen shot of this, but Zahra does a little “this is awesome!” happy dance whenever she meets a new ghost. Other Sim reactions to ghosts are the kind of “talk to the hand” freak out that Cycl0n3 and Connor, amusingly, both do. There’s also the grimace of disgust. I’m sure this is related to personality traits. Oh, and Coward Sims faint. Good thing the family trait is Brave, which is the opposite of Coward.)

2.21 Two for the Price of One

May3

Layla had a textbook pregnancy. Whe she wasn’t enraging spouses, she spent her maternity leave working in the garden. In due time, she went into labor.

It’s a boy! Adjo Sample was born at 12:04 AM.

And, um, it’s a girl too! Shanni Sample was born at 12:06 AM.

Lancelot spent both of Layla’s pregnancies pining for girls, so he was delighted at the second arrival. Not that he didn’t think Adjo was delightful. He just seemed to have fantasies about raising princesses.

Since they’d only planned for one child, there really was no place for two cribs. In desperation, Lance and Layla booted Cycl0n3 out of Jared’s old room to make a dedicated nursery. The ghost moved a bed to the attic and started sleeping there.

Time to do a lot of things in twos.

Time to get half as much sleep.

Good thing babies aren’t babies for long.

(OK, truth is that Layla has had Fertility Treatment since before she got pregnant with Zahra. So it was a surprise to Lance and Layla, but not so much for me.)

2.20 Just a Game

May1

Layla had one in the oven, and it was a good feeling.

Still, she wasn’t as thrilled to be on maternity leave. She missed the bistro. Most of all, she missed her boss Antonio. The two of them had become incredibly close working in the kitchen, and it seemed unfair that she should have to go a whole Sim-week without seeing him. Maybe she could get him to come visit. When she called him, he was delighted to hear her voice, and he came right over.

They stood out on the front deck in the sunlight and flirted.

Which didn’t go very well at all.

Lance shot Layla a heartwrenching look and reamed Antonio out for presuming things about his wife’s virtue.

“But it’s only a game!” Layla insisted. “We don’t mean anything by it. I’d never do anything ot hurt you.”

Antonio decided that discretion was the better part of valor and headed away. Lance, however, was not to be put off. He followed Antonio in hot pursuit.

The bicycle, as much as he loved it, was probably not the best choice of vehicles. Antonio was gone to work by the time Lance got to his his house.

He came home, hurt, sputtering, and humiliated, and set himself to venting his frustration.

Maybe the top branch could be Antonio’s head.

Layla set herself to calming his pride. Look, she was pretty obviously carrying his baby. Did he really think, even if she was so inclined, that she’d be stepping out on him in this condition?

The next day, when things had calmed down, she headed to Antonio’s place to apologize for the fiasco.

Antonio was thrilled to see her and the almost-baby.

And he mentioned, casually, that he’d just gotten married.

Had she met his lovely, um, incredibly young wife, Devin?

Antonio, you dog.

At least it was good to get some time to hang out together without the green-eyed monster looking over their shoulders.

Or maybe not.

Maybe there was no place for them to really spend time together except at work. Spouses just didn’t understand.

2.19 Not Quite Right

May1

So, Cycl0n3 wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t alive either. Before his death, he and Sandi French had been a hot item. They’d never tied the knot for some reason he couldn’t really remember now. What would she think of him now that he was back?

Sandi was married, that’s what. They’d been together for years and never really even talked about it. It hadn’t taken her long to get over him. But for all that, Cycl0n3 couldn’t seem to feel hurt. He was glad she was happy. But whatever had been between them was just a memory.

Eventually, he couldn’t resist the tug of his ghost nature.

Zahra, on the other hand, was finding socializing at elementary school harder than she’d thought it would be. She came home and called everyone she knew at school to play with her, but nobody wanted to come.

Eventually she played by herself.

At least she had one best friend.

2.18 Off to School for You

Apr29

Zahra’s birthday came around just as Layla returned from her trip to Egypt. Layla, now the family socialite in the absence of Susie, threw a big party.

The Ursines were invited. Rachel was married again. Her first husband, Pablo, had been about thirty Sim-days her senior and had died of old age right after they were married, though they’d managed to produce a son, Jess, on their wedding night. Now she was married again to Harvey Jean, a fellow a good 20 Sim-days her junior. I guess that balanced the scales. Rachel, her brother Julian, and Jess, where all invited. So was Antonio, Layla’s boss with whom she got along almost too well.

Layla didn’t have quite the social-fu that Susie had. The guests all lingered out on the front deck, chatting, and didn’t give little Zahra much mind.

There was also a rather large influx of people nobody had ever met before. And they spent a lot of time thanking Lance for inviting them. Hmmmmm.

Zahra aged up!

She almost immediately developed an aversion to the art around the house. With a rock star grandmother, a grandfather who was a successful author, and a father who wanted to be the next Renoir, enough was enough. She demanded that the art be removed from her bedroom.

She turned to math and science, burying her nose in books about logic, astronomy, and geometry.

And Cylcl0n3 won a chess partner.

Layla, OTOH, finally capitulated to Lance’s meaningful glances.

One more child. Just one.

At least the baby-making is lots of fun.