Random Christmas toddler pictures

This really has nothing to do with this game; I just didn't want to create a new blog just to post these pictures.

If you'll vote on the best one(s), I'll put it on Simatography. I can't decide, and I don't want to flood them with 50 similar shots. The last two are my favorites, but once I started taking them, I didn't want to stop.

 

A rash of burglaries

I was planning on doing a long update this time and spending lots of time with each family, but most of them just weren't doing anything interesting.

Menuchah at least had another exciting interlude. Last time it was a fire; this time it's a burglar. I made her wake up and call the police as soon as I heard the burglar music. The cop came, and then just stood there for so long that even the burglar got bored. Menuchah turned her head and gave a deadpan look into the camera as if to say, "Can you BELIEVE this?!"

Then he had the gall to stand there and check her out.

She's thinking "oh, you are SO busted just as soon as I call your boss tomorrow."

Rachel and Max's son Riley is a big boy now. He's disciplined, friendly, and he has the photographer's eye, which is one of the new WA traits. I changed his hair style but nothing else. I LOVE the way he dressed himself. That's Rachel's son, all right. I wouldn't have known him for the same child, though. Everything about him looks different, right down to his skin color. Rachel is actually watching TV with him in this shot. I didn't know they could watch TV in bed.

I saw another ghost there. Apparently, the entire Remington family is buried on the property and I never noticed. I found some other headstones in the flower bed.

Max is still unemployed. I can't keep him away from the books, but all he will read is pregnancy books even though he has a pack full of skill books. Rachel isn't even pregnant. Every time I take the pregnancy books away from him, he gets another one.

Lexie and her son Freddie enjoyed a nice afternoon at the park. I might have gotten a better shot of them had they not both kept choking on their hamburgers, leaving not much for me to take a picture of. While they were eating, I got a popup message saying "William ran into Menuchah Muleskinner and chatted for a while." I've never had a message like that before. Menuchah was at work and William was having drinks inside the diner rabbit hole, so this may be something new - the game letting me know of things my active family is doing that it knows I can't see for myself. I wish it would do that more often!

I got that message twice, then when he'd finished his drinks, William stayed in the parking lot and started playing his guitar. Suppose he's serenading her? Hehe.

Tyler and Talia had a great day. They both landed promotions. Tyler also got a hefty bonus and a cool new food processor. Stephanie got too hungry to wait for mom and dad to get home, and cooked dinner herself. She looks pretty pleased with herself.

I don't know who this lady is who was at home with the kids, since Stephanie's plenty old enough to do any babysitting needed. Whoever she is, the kids decided to have some fun with her. Stephanie staged an insane fit and freaked the poor woman out. Carter was amused.

Sharla Sharma came over for a visit and she and Carter got acquainted. Those sim kids are so polite. They invited Sharla to stay for dinner, but she had to go home.

A nice family dinner. Mom was eating at the diner. If anything could make Tyler less sexy it would be that hat, but he's still damn fine.

I was right: the cute girl at the protest rally, Georgia Pickett, is officially Ronnie's girl now. I didn't get to see them together, but I'm sure I will soon.

Ronnie got hit by a burglar too. Fortunately, he had an alarm designed to incapacitate burglars by splitting their eardrums and blinding them with radiating pulses of neon light.

Ronnie got a kick out of it all.

I noticed he got another promotion, too. And a commendation from the General for doing a good deed.

Honestly, this ghost is everywhere. I liked it when they stuck to their own property.

Just because Ronnie gives me such good photo ops and I love taking pictures of him ...

They grow up so fast

Well, I didn't save all of their jobs. It was too little too late. I'm not going to babysit them, though. Max got fired, or possibly quit, and Larry and Lexie both got demoted. On the other hand, Wyatt has reached level 6 in his career and Tyler's at level 5.

Ronnie's new friend Georgia was visiting him, and she seems to like him a lot. She likes his jokes. I had to age her up because she was only a teen and I won't have him robbing the cradle. Just look at that smile on his face. I think he's sweet on her. I hope for good things there. Maybe even before I finish the next long rotation. He's also been working out a little and gotten a promotion, even though he and his boss still can't stand each other.

Speaking of AJ, it looks as though she and Sam have moved away again. I don't like it, but they're going to have to stay gone this time. Free will is free will, after all.

Rachel was teaching Riley to talk. Judging by the look on her face, he's doing fairly well. The reason I wanted this picture was that they brought along their own rug to sit on, which I'd never seen before. Unfortunately, in my haste I clicked in the wrong place and caused them to stop what they were doing. I tried to get them to do it again, but they didn't put the rug down again.

Tyler and Talia forgot to pay their bills, and the repo man came. They slept through it.

The other kids all had birthdays. The first thing I did was go around and give some of them more becoming hairstyles and everyday clothes, and get rid of the cribs and books (I hate having to type that last part).
 
Stephanie's a teen now, so she gets some skill books. She's allowed to wear makeup now, too, although her daddy said no to the gloppy eyeshadow. I might take her to City Hall and change her name so it's spelled "right." I can't keep remembering to spell it Stephenie.

Let me take a pic of each of the kids, and I'll leave the household rotation until next time. I've been sitting here fighting with CAS and CASt for hours and I'm starving.

Sharla Sharma
(heavy sleeper, evil, mean spirited)

She just didn't feel like smiling. You can still see her  pretty eyes, though.

Stephanie Townsend
(brave, insane, genius, friendly)

Stephanie is very excited to be a young lady. She aged up into long hair like her mom's, which unfortunately didn't look at all good on her. With short hair she's very pretty. I lightened it just a touch, too. Now if she'll only make friends in high school.

Freddie Alexander
(loves the outdoors, genius, evil)

Definitely got his dad's pretty eyes. With those traits, I won't be surprised if he becomes a mad scientist.

Carter Townsend
(brave, absent-minded, grumpy)

Carter stayed adorable. What else can I say?

I'll try for a longer update later.

Wayward adults and cute kids

With one or two exceptions, everybody was on the verge of getting demoted or fired. Even the ones whose job performance smileys were perfect. The only reason I could come up with is that, when I'm not looking, they're skipping work. I did find one or two skipping work when I played their households. It may be related to that glitch I've been getting lately where they queue up a task and instantly cancel it, in an endless loop so they end up doing nothing. I saw a lot of that happening too. It's a funny glitch. It comes and goes.

None of the babysitters would go home, either. That was actually pretty funny, and I left the Walker's babysitter there because he at least was taking good care of the baby while everybody else went to bed. He also mopped up the puddle from the broken sink and put away the dinner leftovers.

I went around slapping wrists, sending them to work if I found them playing hooky, taking away the novels they keep slipping into their backpacks, and making doubly sure they only have skill books to read.

I set aging on normal now that the baby boom is over. I snuck in a few last toddler screenshots before they all age up.

 

The park is haunted. That ghost who lives in Rachel's house has begun hanging out there and may never go home. He loves it there. I don't know if I like the new ghosts who can stay out in the day time. It makes it less of a novelty to have a playable ghost.

 

This guy looks like he was young and cute when he died. He seems very happy.

Tyler finished up the job of teaching Carter to walk.

 

I wanted one nice shot of Stephenie Townsend before she aged. I've never seen anybody actually build anything with the blocks before.

 

I had to spend at least a few minutes with each person while they were at work, to try to to get them to work harder or suck up to the boss, or whatever I thought might get them out of trouble.

Menuchah was so engrossed in talking to William on the phone that she never noticed when the hamburger she was cooking caught fire.

 

 

Good thing she had a fire alarm.

 

The fireman was pretty ticked off at her, but she seems to be secretly amused.

 

 

Not terribly perturbed, she went right ahead and prepared her lunch. A nice safe fruit and cheese plate this time.

The counter and stove were ruined, but the paper towels were untouched.

I don't know whether they were protesting engagments, diamond rings, or what, but Tyler, Rachel, and Max were all in on it. If the signs had had wedding rings on them instead of engagement rings, I'd feel a little guilty, since I'm the one who made Max and Rachel get married.

 

That Egyptian tourist is still in town. Menuchah played welcome wagon and engaged him in conversation about gardening. Stephenie had to get out of the house to read a novel, because I had taken them all away.

 

Then it was Lexie's turn. She got to hear an Egyptian folk song. The guy on the bench behind them is only dressed like a tourist. He actually lives in town. His wife is the one who knocked over Sam's trash can.

 

I know crowd shots are never very successful or very interesting, but I wanted to check on the protest rally again. I think I spotted just about all of our sims who weren't at work at the time, plus the ghost! Ronnie is standing off to the side pretending to ignore them. Maybe he's afraid he'll get in trouble at work if he gets involved.

 

Turns out he was just working up his nerve to chat up the pretty girl.

 

 

I'd intended to play until the toddlers aged up into children, but the game began to do that thing where it slows down to 2 frames per second. No exaggeration - I checked. I'll post kid pics next time.

A very quick peek

Just a quick peek around town this time, because I know Rachel's baby was about to age up, and I want to see what's happening with poor little Stephenie.

I found Larry and Becky at the park for an adults day out. Later on, they took Sharla for an outing at the pool. Tyler went to the park and played foosball by himself. I'd say moving the park was a distinct, albeit small, improvement.

I saw my first bonafide foreign tourist! I'd seen sims around town in foreign garb, but they always had American sounding names and turned out to live in town. This guy actually has the appellation "tourist" after his name. He's even carrying around his camera, snapping pictures to show the folks back home in Al Simhara.

Here's Rachel and Max's boy, Riley. His favorite food is frog's legs. Don't ask me where a toddler learns to like frog's legs. Max was skipping work to watch TV.

The entire Wyatt/Manchester household went to the art museum after work. Apparently, William finally got tired of wearing that suit. He look as if he's thinking, "Watch out now, Walker. That's my little buddy you've got there and I know how to handle him. Don't you drop him."

Stephenie has raised her grades to a B already. Good girl! She hadn't done her homework, so I had her get help from her mom. Tyler was visiting at his boss's house.

As far as I'm concerned, Carter doesn't even have to do anything but stand there and look cute.

Sam and AJ had a visitor, somebody named Tiffanie who I can't place. I thought she was extraordinarily pretty for a townie, but she's not nice at all. She picked a fight with Sam and, when he asked her to behave, stormed out in a huff and took her petty revenge on their trashcan.

"Take that, diabolical rubbish bin! I can whip you with one hand stuccoed behind my back!"