Ashanti Datlow Has Twins
(Sorry for the low-quality images in the post. Don't worry the images will improve soon, I hadn't realized it was set on low quality until after I had booted out of the game.)
When Ashanti Datlow gave birth three days later, it was possibly during the only time in my entire experience with the Sims 2 that I did not want twins. Dutifully she gave birth to a boy and a girl which I named Cameron and Camisha. I was seriously worried that my challenge was now over before it had even properly begun.
I have only ever taken care of twins with only one person once before. In my scrapped Prosperity Neighborhood where I had a Romance Elder taking care of twin toddlers. The man didn't get a full nights rest for their entire toddlerhood. His energy bar just hovered around the half-way point.
Now I was raising twins with an adult in perma-plat (and I wouldn't recommend doing it any other way) with another adult insistent on getting in the way at every oppurtunity.
Here is Jove in desperate need of a shower holding one of the twins who was in desperate need of a diaper change.
I learned a couple of things that became vital in completing the challenge at that time. One, a Sim will stop, drop and cease doing just about anything for a hug. They will get out of hot tubs, stop eating, cease playing the piano (guitar, bass, drums), stop hanging out, stop talking, and (most importantly) put down whatever child they happen to be torturing at the moment.
The twins successfully became toddlers. The baby stage wasn't that hard. I found out that a Sim will autonomously feed a baby just before they wet their diaper and then hold the baby until they have a desperation at which point they will drop the child wherever they happen to be instead of taking the time to lay it in it's crib (or bothering to change its diaper) before going off to take care of themselves. This slightly irks me but is really no big deal as Ashanti would be there to get the baby taken care of and back in their crib.
Here I had Ashanti take care of little Cameron (now a toddler) and then set him down expecting him to play with one of the toys laying about. Instead he crawled out to the living room and began jamming to the radio.
With the toddlers I learned the best thing to do was just get them in a schedule. That way I could predict their needs pretty easily. I would usually take them to the trainer potty first, then bathe them, then feed them and leave them to their own devices until I see Jove heading for the nursery or until they complain that they are tired (both are signs that it is nap time!). The fact that a toddler has no qualms drinking from a fresh bottle lying out on the floor autonomously ended up being a huge help (the fact that they do the same for a rotting bottle just meant that I kept the nursery much cleaner then I ever have before).
Once the twins were potty trained, I began just letting both of them out of their cribs first and had them find the trainer potty on their own. Unfortunately the Datlows could only afford one trainer potty at the time. The re-modeling took a huge chunk out of the finances and Jove's money ended up paying bills. He autonomously paid them when he came home from work before I had a chance to spend the money on a second potty, it was the first time in the challenge he had ever done so.
I ended up hiring a nanny and only then found out that nannies are horrible at "keeping track" of your schedule. Half the time the nanny would show up, half the time they wouldn't. So I would wait until half an hour before work and if the nanny didn't show I would call to hire one "just for now".
This one occasion the van pulled up just before Ashanti left for work and two nannies got out. I didn't worry about it at first. But I ultimately ended up sitting on my hands watching them try to take care of my twins. They started up a production line bringing Cameron bottles. Apparently he was hungry. He was scooted back from his toy, but not far enough back for a nanny to give him a bottle so they would lay it down and get him another. By then the other nanny had already started bringing him a bottle so, since it was in his que he wouldn't move.
They brought him 14 bottles total. I am not kidding.
He was whining that he was exhausted and ended up passed out surrounded by a moutain of bottles by the time Ashanti got home. It took me forever to fire the nannys as they were running around pretending to be competent and cleaning the place as if they had been doing it all along, and then, even with a trashcompactor temporarily moved to the room, it took an hour (Sim time) to clean the nursery back up.
This brings me to another annoying autonomous thing that Sims do with toddlers that I blame Maxis for exclusively. When a Sim lays a toddler in the crib they go through this really cute animation where they fight off sleep a few times and then fall back and curl up and sleep, right? So cute, right? The toddler dosen't actually begin sleeping until they curl up, that whole animation thing they spend awake. So a Sim says "my child is tired" then "I'm going to put them in a crib". They do so. While waiting to decide what the next thing in their que is they realize "my child is tired" because the toddler is still doing the animation and, whilst in a crib, is not yet asleep, then the Sim decides "I'm going to put them in a crib" even though they are already in a bloody crib! So they wake the child up and put the child in a different crib. At which point we go back to the beginning and do the same song and dance and play musical cribs until the adult has a desperation. Jove, usually wets his pants, which I find amusing, and then leaves the child on the floor passed out while he goes and uses the toddler bathtub to take a nice long bubble bath.
Of course, with twins, usually the other crib is occupied by another toddler. If this happens (or if there is only one crib) then the Sim will hold the toddler until they have a desperation at which point they ditch the kid on the floor and go take care of themselves.
Camisha and Jove alternated between her complaining that she was tired and him complaining that he needed to pee. Usually I put the toddler in the crib and if Jove is hovering around trying to fish a toddler back out of the crib I would have Ashanti give him a hug then influence him to go clean something (do not hire a maid for this challenge). Once the toddlers are in their cribs and Ashanti is out of the room I have taken to selling the doors, that way the little ones can get some sleep. Who would have thought that it would be the adults that keep the toddlers up at all hours in an autonomous world and not the other way around? Madness.
Of course, sometimes the desperation is much more serious then needing to pee. At one point I seriously thought that Jove was going to die. Sims put their childs needs above their own, and so even though he was starving, exhausted and stunk to high heaven he insisted on holding a screaming toddler because Cameron was tired. I ended up having Ashanti serve a meal of lobster thermidor and then had her hug Jove and grab the toddler herself. Jove ate two plates of lobster thermidor and then went to sleep for a very long time. Very, very slowly his background color eased from a deeper red then I have ever seen in my game, to a yellow. After getting up and showering and watching TV with Ashanti for a few hours, he was green again. At one point during that long night I seriously thought, "thank God, he's going to die and I'm not going to have to worry about him anymore" which is the closest to Sim homicide I have ever gotten.
Of course, he survived, for a little longer anyway. And the twins finally, finally, became children. At that point I realized that Camisha was supposed to have her mother's hair. Blond is the color Ashanti's eyebrows were even with that hair until I changed her eyebrows to something custom. I decided to keep Camisha a blond instead though, because I thought it was cute that her and her twin brother matched. Here they are autonomously giving each other a hug after growing up and promptly racing to the bathroom to have a pee.
Next I began a bit of a tradition. I had Ashanti give her old handheld to Camisha, my chosen heir due to the fact that I was not up for remotely controlling an autonomous pregnant woman. In reality a child would not be that excited about receving a handheld that her Elder mother had since back in her college days, but Camisha was simply estatic. I ended up going out and getting Cameron one too.
Here are the twins after their makeovers. Their childhood was much simpler to handle then their toddlerhood had been. I took to serving meals three times a day (at 4am, 2pm, and 10pm) and made sure to help each of the twins with their homework once every day but the day they came home with an A report card. At that point you can leave one assignment undone so I would use that assignment to determine where they would lay down future assignments (at a desk in plain view). You know, instead of on the sidewalk/street, in the living room behind a couch, or in the study under the pool table. Sim children can be very inventive when they want to be.
I set up a bedroom for the twins downstairs with two single beds. Since Jove already thought the upstairs bed was his I didn't think this would be a problem. I forgot to take into account the fact that Sims are lazy. He began sleeping in the downstairs beds forcing one of the twins to go upstairs to sleep when they were tired.
Unfortunately that was still where the easel was kept and so once Ashanti's cellphone rang, Camisha was awake again. She decided to jump on her parents bed for about twenty minutes before howling at me that she was tired, couldn't I see that? She then got back into bed and went back to sleep.
Previously annoying things were suddenly quite fun as far as the twins were concerned. Unmade beds were made so that the twins could jump on them. Puddles from broken showers suddenly became the coolest thing ever to play in. I ended up selling most of the toys I bought for the twins because they found so many other ways to amuse themselves. That and the fact that Jove would pick up the bear to talk through it to someone when no one was home, not just once, but again and again and again until he had a desperation kinda freaked me out.
On one of the few occasions that Jove would enter the children's bedroom to find that both beds were already claimed by their rightful owners he would stop before doing the long slow stomping walk up the stairs to his rightful bed to autonomously tuck the twins in. I thought it was kinda cute, actually.
In fact they often had so much fun that, when they brought home friends from school more often then not they simply ignored them. Here Camisha plays her handheld while Cameron practices piano, Faline Skye is left to her own devices and ended up simply dancing to Cameron's music.
Most of the time they are either so wrapped up in their individual pursuits or with each other that any friends from school are normally completely ignored. That and not long after getting their fun up and maybe grabbing some lunch they make a bee-line for bed. By the time they wake up again, the friend is long gone. Not that the twins notice.
I decided to take a picture of this because it is the first time in game that two autonomous Sims sit down for a meal at the same time. Camisha and Sebastian Cayly sit down to lunch while Cameron is jamming on the piano.
From a different angle it is quite a different story. Jove is, very intensly, waiting to do an interaction in his que with Camisha while Ashanti, I think, is finally starting to resent being surrounded by idiots. Actually I only gave her a few points in her nice category, which is what I normally do when I create a Sim because I figure, since I'm controlling her, I can make her nice whether she wants to be or not. Of course I didn't consider the fact that her personality would be passed on to her descendants, which I would not be controlling. Didn't really think that through there.
And, here it is, the very first fire in the Datlow household and it is started by none other then Ashanti herself. I believe she was cooking a late breakfast and the next thing I knew the stove caught fire. Only Ashanti was affected.
Once the weekend rolled around I began wondering what I was going to do with these kids, and Jove, now that all three were going to be home all weekend. The kids decided what they wanted to do for me. I believe that by the end of the weekend Cameron had his Creativity maxed and Camisha nearly so. See? Being autonomous isn't so bad...
Posted by Bitsy at 12:23 PM Comments
Whoa, you're doing wayyyy better than I did with my ISBI family! In mine, the first child was taken away by the social worker for bad grades (I could never get on a good schedule for helping her with homework), then my torch-holder had twins. I managed to get them aged to teen, which was a huge relief, before I stopped playing them. I ended up moving my torch-holder's husband out because he was constantly depressed. Heh.
You're right, that glitch with the toddlers is extremely frustrating -- my Sims are constantly taking toddlers out of their cribs and putting them in other cribs, or putting them on the floor, despite the fact that their sleep bar is completely red! I have to say the nanny was my friend for my ISBI family -- I'd hire her "just for now" and call her up again right after she left. She helped immensely.
Didn't know that about "hugs" -- very interesting! I did figure out to put a stereo in the kids' room so I could wake them up from naps whenever I needed them to get up, and yeah, Influencing also comes in very handy. Well, I'm glued to this commentary of yours, I hope you keep it up!
Posted by: Jen on December 7, 2005 03:54 PM
I am so impressed by your patience. I don't think I could handle this challenge. I nearly committed Simicide on Meadow Thayer and her whole family the other day because of the toddler harassment issue (Meadow, her husband, and her teenage child were all Family Sims, so of course life became an endless succession of "pick up the toddler and set the toddler down" with her twins--and that was with me having control of all of them!). Good grief.
Posted by: Annette on December 7, 2005 05:12 PM
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