Jordan Datlow Has Six Children
When the kids came home from school that day they brought three townie children with them: Tristan Chaucer, Sebastian Cayly and Olivia Mead. The three immediately headed to the living room and watched children's shows.
Where were my kids? Well they never really leave the study once they come home. I had Jordan rope Rinaldo into doing his homework right off the bat. It really is best to try and cram in homework early and often when you have four kids that need to get it done. The rest where either on the piano or cheering on a kid who was.
After Jordan and Rinaldo finished his homework and Rinaldo had wandered off, the townies had moved on to the kitchen for lunch. This is their normal autonomous pattern. TV for fun, then lunch, then a bit of socializing before running off at 8:30pm. I find it odd that my Sims autonomous pattern doesn't jell at all with a townies autonomous pattern as my kids normally don't interact at all with child townies for the five and a half hours the townies hang around before going home.
Well, except for Lainey. She really enjoys the chess board above other pursuits such as playing the piano or cheering the person playing the piano. Sebastian took it upon himself to join her, or perhaps she asked him to join, I'm never sure if Sims can do that last one autonomously or not. Nevertheless they became friends before long, though Lainey didn't get any aspiration for it. I'm guessing Sebastian wasn't the one she brought home.
I had Jordan serve a perfectly good meal of pork chops at five. At six Gawain became a teenager, I rolled Knowledge, and an hour later he headed to the kitchen, ignored the meal laid out for him and instead had a TV Dinner. He had to cook two before his hunger was satisfied.
The next morning, a saturday, Jordan had made it to the kitchen in plenty of time to serve breakfast. Which most of the family took advantage of. I think it's amazing that, while on controlled lots it's hard to get six Sims into the kitchen together, they will do so autonomously fairly effortlessly on saturdays when they all chose to ignore the dinner prepared the night before. Gawain preferred a Toaster Pastry though, while Flora apparently had a problem with the way that Jordan made Omelettes.
With most of the kids either on the cusp of teenhood, or already there, I decided to go ahead and have Jordan get pregnant with the heir. Time was a wasting! How is it that in a house with at least three neat-nic Sims, the bathrooms are still able to get this dirty?
Saturday afternoon involved a kicky-bag tournament with Jamal and Gawain being the finalists. Nathaniel and Lainey cheer the competitors on.
That night Nathaniel became a teen, I rolled Family. Also, for the first time this generation, I couldn't keep the torch holder in Gold. The pregnancy was really sapping him out and his aspiration was suffering for it. So he actually had to sit down and eat breakfast with the rest of the family, and had to use one of the beds that afternoon for a power nap. It took a full day to finally get his aspiration up high enough that I could have him hop in the energizer. I would have simply had Jordan meditate through the pregnancy, but there was still Lainey to consider. She needed someone to serve meals for her still, serving meals also cut down on the chaos in the kitchen, somewhat.
That night though, while Jordan was still trying to get his energy up, the rest of the family gave up on him serving dinner and so everyone but Lainey cooked for themselves. As far as I can tell a child Sim cannot autonomously use the play stove. Later I got a skin and bones pop-up, so I had to wake Jordan up to go and serve a meal. He has to serve because just cooking a meal and canceling the eat action dosen't work. Someone will come by and clean it up. Only a really hungry Sim will sit down and eat it.
When Lainey became a teen, I rolled Fortune, I immediately used her command chance to apply for scholarships. While I was controlling each of the other boys to have them apply for scholarships she went and picked up the baby, who had been born just that night. A hug could not get her to drop the baby either and I didn't understand why, still don't. So I gave up and after all four had applied for scholarships - they all had good grade scholarships and two had a creativity scholarship, while Lainey had a logic scholarship - I popped out to the neighborhood and sent them all to university. By the way, I could see no way to apply for scholarships from the neighborhood screen. If there is a way, would someone leave a comment and tell me about it? The rules say it's possible, but I didn't see anything of the sort.
When I booted back into the lot the baby was curled up in the street, so I had Jordan go and rescue her. Then I used Jamal's command chance and moved him out. Jordan was now at the top of his career and with three days maternity leave I figured it was safe to "fire" the live-in baby-sitter. The baby, by the way, is a baby girl, the first Datlow with dark hair since Ashanti. Her name is Jasmine.
The house became much quieter with only Flora, Jordan and Jasmine about. And, Flora seemed to be getting a little stir crazy. Before she would ignore the phone for hours on end as it rang off the hook with her friends begging to hear from her. Now, she will race to the phone to answer it, even if she happened to be in the middle of her daughter's birthday celebration.
I had Jordan get pregnant again right away. I've learned the sooner you can get the baby stage over, the better. This way the baby years over-lap and the insane spouse-tries-unsucessfully-to-take-care-of-children phase doesn't last as long. In this case the spouse was stir crazy too.
In fact, Flora was so stir crazy, she would snatch up her daughter as soon as she was awake and cuddle and play with and kiss her over and over again for simply hours.
Until her needs got too low to carry on. Then Jasmine would toddle as fast as her little feet could take her to try and make it to the trainer potty in time...
She usually didn't make it though.
After a diaper change and a nap, Jasmine would be up again, and Flora would be ready for her. Not that Flora didn't take care of her daughter when the time called for it. I even managed to time Jordan taking a great picture of Flora putting Jasmine to bed that you can see in the background here.
My photographer husband framed up this shot actually. He had seen another person's style of photography previously that he wanted to try out. So, since he saw I was paused and snapping a pic anyway he asked if I would mind if he took one. The style was using a close up shot, cutting off the forehead, with the face filling the view finder. I thought it was kind of cool actually. Still conveys that he is in labor without doing the normal full body labor shot that most Simmers do.
Flora and Jordan's last child was another girl, though she isn't a clone of Jasmine. I named her Jacqueline.
And, here she is, a toddler already! For some reason Flora wasn't nearly as abusive with the kids as past spouses were. Must be a Family Sim thing.
These are the heirs I still haven't chosen between by the way. I'm hoping in my next Datlow post that you people will either help me decide, or just decide for me!
Posted by Bitsy at 12:00 AM Comments
I love that diaper-changing shot. Even Jasmine looks disgusted with herself. ;-)
Posted by: Annette on January 13, 2006 02:31 PM
Indeed, a nice labour shot. I try to make those look different as well.
Like the updates too, there still is a story, even tough it's a non-controled story...
And luckily you can get your males to have the babies too, I wonder how difficult it must be to get a non-controllable sim have a baby!!
Posted by: Yicke on January 13, 2006 04:06 PM
I just love how this challenge is coming along. The gameplay is definitely different than any other out there. And very challenging, I'm sure. Which is why you're doing such a great job! And I have to say, Flora and Jasmine look so cute with their matching hairstyles! ;)
Posted by: Jessica on January 14, 2006 01:06 AM
Just a note, the other day one of my sim kids used their play stove spontaneously. Not sure why, she wasn't even all that hungry! But I thought of you immediately :)
This is a great story, I actually feel somewhat prepared for my own attempt at the Idiots challenge. (I'm such a micro-manager that I'm half afraid to start it, lol)
rugs
Posted by: rugrat0ne on May 13, 2006 09:06 AM
Wow, I didn't know kids could autonomously use the play stove! Thanks so much for the heads up, I'm definitely going to see about putting one or two in the Datlow household for the next generation. Thanks so much for commenting. :)
Posted by: Bitsy on May 13, 2006 02:38 PM
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