Needing a bit of a break from all the drama that Max is bringing to his world for a moment, I decided to pop on over to The Waters Family and see how they were doing. The last time I played them, Emily was picking herself back up by changing careers, trying desperately to meet a man and in the process met Rainer. It's good to see her moving on, I don't think Adrian will be too upset as we saw in Ghosts at Play...

Fast fowarding to now, I came in the day before Emily's birthday. I can't believe how quickly time has passed!! Taking her from young adult to an adult, it's now time to grow up. If I was to compare the sims to real life, I would put the young adult stage up to around 30, then the adult stage from 30 through to 50 where they then become an elder. So I look at Emily as an early 30's at the moment, which is still young enough to accomplish things... such as the rest of her family. (Her lifetime wish is to raise 5 children and she's 3 short...)

Since Adrian's passing, Emily has been coming out of her shell more, getting out in town and generally making more friends. This is a great thing as she really never left the house when Adrian and Grandpa were around, they didn't like her being anywhere other than at home doing her chores and making sure they were both looked after. Because she has been getting out though, there were lots of good friends and neighbours at her birthday party - the house was packed!

Chatting to Umi and Alter the other day, I learnt that there is a Mysterious Mr. Gnome in game - and he moves around! Umi, or Alter (I wasn't sure who I was talking to) have two of these little guys and shared an image of them frolicking in the garden. After seeing that image, I just had to get me one of these guys.

I did some investigating and discovered that the Mysterious Mr.Gnome is nameable which is kinda cool. He is dressed in a very trendy orange hat that has a yellow star shaped flower on it with a brown center. He also sports a long gray beard, blue button down shirt, red pants and shoes of an odd brown-tan colour. Clearly a trend setter this guy.

The Mysterious Mr.Gnome is kickable (lol!), like any good gnome should be. But unlike the regular garden gnome you can purchase, he cannot be cloned with the eyedropper tool. He also has the habit of sneaking around your house. How cool! Unnerving, but then aren't all garden gnomes?

Apparnetly you will never see the gnome sneaking around, instead, he just pops up in all sorts of places that you never put him in. If kicked, he falls in odd positions that you would never expect from a gnome and sometimes ends up with a plaster across the bridge of his nose (har har). When picked up, he is known to float on air, do hand stands and assume other theatrical positions.

Last time I played The Waters family, Susie age-glitched into a teen, completely bypassing her childhood. After much internal debate on what to do, I decided to follow my gut feeling and just keep plowing ahead. Thankfully this matched the reader feedback so I wasn't at too much risk of pissing any of you off LOL. And thankyou everyone for your comments and suggestions!!

After decided to just go with the flow..., I was happy to see that it really didn't appear to be affecting anyone at all. In fact, it didn't even appear to be a blip on their radar of weirdness, which was of course, wierd!

Since Melani was having her own life drama, I decided to leave her to settle in with Hal for a bit and tonight, I stuck my head back in on the Waters to see if everything was still running smoothly. It was... scarily so.

Thomas was still doing well in school. Outside of school he was making friends and appeared to be doing ok. With all that's happened recently - Adrian and Richard (Grandpa) dying, Emily being unable to cope with it all, and Susie aging up too quickly, the poor boy has been feeling a bit pushed aside lately. I've not yet seen this wish come up...

After a quick hug and a chat to mum, the wish was granted. The poor bugger must have been feeling very ignored...

Quickly filling Thomas' almost bare room were gems, butterflies, gold and iron bars. The butterflies she could explain away, boys always like to torture bugs. But the gems? The iron and gold bars?! These were not normal possessions for a young boy. Especially not a boy from a family barely able to afford food. Something was up here, and she was going to get to the bottom of it.

For now, Susie decided she wasn't going to tell her mother. She wanted to find out what was going on first, she didn't see any point in upsetting Emily if there was no real reason to. Perhaps Thomas did have a believable excuse...

Susie herself was doing ok. Struggling with school work due to being dumped into high school with absolutely no primary school education what so ever, she's been frustrated and abandoning her homework for more enjoyable activities. She's been wanting to raise her logic skill in the hope it will help her succeed at school and has been begging Emily constantly for a telescope. Using the only current funds the household has, Emily caved and made the purchase.

Susie was ecstatic and ran outside to use it straight away. Five minutes later she returned inside (as she has "hates the outdoors" as one of her traits) to complain to Emily about the bugs, wind and bright sun. She immediately started asking for a chess table she could use inside instead. Emily could only sigh... it didn't bode well for her finances if Susie was going to be one of those children who constantly had their hand out.

Emily told her she could play chess on the computer and make do until she could afford a table of her own. With a sigh and a groan, Susie jumped online. The teenage frustration quickly changed however when Susie discovered there was more to the computer than 2D pixelated chess - there was the ability to chat to all her friends at school, browse the Internet and so much more.

Quickly, scanning her options, Susie discovered the pot of gold...

It didn't take her long to start poking fun at the members of the forum she visited. I couldn't quite make out what kind of forum she was on, but there was some shaking of fists and angry typing. I can only assume it was a gaming forum of some sort, I know they do my head in pretty quickly most times lol. Or perhaps it was a forum for teenagers to complain about their cheap, money hording parents? Who knows...

What ever forum she was on however, it caused enough of an impact for Susie to finally get a lifetime wish pop up. Obviously when you create a sim, you get to choose their lifetime goal before they even enter the world, but for children growing up, you have to pick them. Normally you chose when they transition from a toddler to a child, however Susie was only a child for approximately 15 minutes, so I never got the chance.

So far I've only had to choose a lifetime wish for two children - Seth and Ricky, Melani's boys. I'm still waiting for Thomas' wish to appear. So far I've had two author wishes come up, so was happy to see something different this time.

Um, Astronaut Susie? Really? That's reaching for the stars a bit isn't it? Oh, reaching for the stars... har har I crack myself up. *rolls eyes* All puns aside, that's a bit rich for a child who never attended primary school and is barely coping with high school. That will be an interesting life goal to accomplish. I guess I better make her quit her job at the local spa and start working a bit harder towards outer space huh?

With the kids appearing to be coping just fine, Emily has been busying herself with her book writing - a new found talent she is thoroughly enjoying. With her first Sci-Fi book hitting the shelves just days ago, she has begun working on another Drama novel. With the two deaths fuelling the first, it's Susie's age jump that is the inspiration for the follow up...

Working at the Grocery store is still going well - mind numbingly easy and suiting her just fine. Looking over the vegetables the other day, she had a wish come up to do a spot of gardening. Feeling the fond memories of Adrian welling up inside, she pocketed an apple seed to bring home and plant. After Adrian's hard work perished, she thought it fitting to chose that as her first seed to plant - Adrian always loved his apple trees.

The Waters Family has already proven to the most interesting, dramatic families I play. We've had the insane sims, the double death by electrocution, two babies very close together and a fist fight between Emily and Grandpa... when he was alive, she didn't dig him up to have one last say or anything!

With all of this in mind, I've decided to just roll with the latest twist in the story and let Susie continue living as the older-youngest child. While it does make it feel like the family has jumped ahead and I've missed a huge chunk of their life, there will be plenty more chances to watch kids grow up in game. Melani already has a couple, and I have NO plans what so ever to stop playing The Waters either, so I'm sure there will be more sim babies to come. I'd like Emily to have some more since she has the "raise 5 babies to teenage" wish, and there's always grand-kids via Susie and Thomas and further generations.

So yes, for the time being, I will just continue playing along. If by some miracle a fix comes along that can revert her age, I'll deal with that then. But otherwise, I'm just going to mark it down as another one of those things this family has to deal with.

Of course, they are all taking it completely in their stride. There was a bit of confusion around bed arrangements as I still had Susie's cot in Emily's room, and no big girl bed for her to sleep in. Three in the bed isn't possible in the Sims, and Emily didn't really have any money to do anything about it. Thankfully after selling the cot and rearranging a few things, Emily was able to afford one single bed, which would go to Susie as she was now the oldest and needed to be sleeping on her own. Thomas is just going to have to endure the co-sleeping arrangement with Emily for the time being.

Thomas hasn't even batted an eyelid at the fact his little sister is now his older sister. Even when she walks around in nothing but her underwear and her, um, noticeably enlarged chest area.

When I realised that Emily was now at school, I thought perhaps she could help Thomas with his school work. But then I also remembered that she's missed her entire junior years and watched her struggle more. Perhaps the tutoring will be the other way round, how embarrassing.

Since Thomas finished his homework first, and he wasn't quite ready for bed, I let him jump on the computer for some free time. Emily was still at work so the kids kinda ran loose a bit - however, yay at no babysitter fees anymore! The household funds might actually start increasing shortly. Which will come in handy should a bail amount be set for Thomas...

Oopsie!

I think my regret for not choosing the evil trait for Thomas might be justified. Although, I would never have known this without picking the Computer Whiz trait in the first place, so perhaps fate was helping out there? What I can see is the beginnings of a very interesting story Thomas is going to tell...

Rising at 4am in the morning, Thomas was the only sim awake. After polishing off some left over pancakes, he decided to jump onto the computer while it was free. Emily has been making use of it at night times in an attempt to finish her first book and get started on the next. The house hold finances are very tight (hello lack of enough beds) and she's desperately trying to hold on. It's the driving force she's been needing to move on from memories of the past.

When Thomas jumped on however, I discovered an interesting new option:

Hack? Hrm... Of course I have to click that!!

The computer screens that followed had me zooming in very quickly! The green command like box image was kinda cool, but when I noticed the image behind it, looking very government like, I kinda got a little nervous. I had these images flashing in my head of the house being bombarded with FBI like sims and little Thomas being halled away while Emily was woken from her sleep with no clue as to what was happening.

Thankfully nothing that drastic occurred, although time will tell if my images were more predictions than fears! I have to give it to the kid though - hacked in on his first attempt!!

The coolest thing (not that crime is ever cool kids!!) is that you can apparently make money as a hacker. I got a message pop up that Thomas had added $10 to the family funds. This made little dollar signs flash up in my own eyes lol, finally a second source of income. No matter how small, this was going to help out!

I can't decide if I will let Emily know of his little trick and have her play co-conspirator to his evil little ways, or if he will hide it and keep it a secret for now. I see the hiding and secret keeping as more of a teenager thing, and he's discovered this ability as a child, children can be more honest.

One thing I do know is that I will definitely have to give Thomas the evil trait next birthday. Perhaps it could be a male gene thing...?

Look at that - hacking completed all before the school bus has arrived!

Kids age so quickly don't they? My daughter is turning two in October and I can't figure out where the time has gone. Emily must be feeling a bit the same way as Thomas has his second birthday and moves from being a toddler to a child. It feels like only last week he had his first birthday! Actually, it kinda was lol - August 23rd for us... I do have the life span setting on long for The Waters Family, where as I play on Epic on all my others, which is why it's come about so quick. I thought it might be interesting to have things churn a long a little quicker with this family and see what that's like.

I couldn't imagine having any shorter life span though, how do others even get to know their sims, let alone have them live long enough to achieve anything significant or tell a story?

Unfortunately, Emily couldn't afford any presents for Thomas. She is so broke at the moment, poor Thomas was going to have to test the comfortability of the sofa to sleep on, but thankfully a child and parent sim can share the same bed, so Thomas just has to sleep with his mum lol. His bed will have to be purchased after Emily's shift on Monday. Sorry Thomas.

The good thing though is Thomas FINALLY got some hair! Thank goodness for that. Two bald toddlers was bad enough, I didn't want to imagine a bald child as well. That said, he's still a very ugly sim LOL! The hair did not help his cause...

Like all my sims, I video record their milestones. The Waters family is no exception to that little luxury. Nothing really interesting happened for poor Thomas. In fact, nearly every guest had a go at the "stand in the way" game... grrr.

By the way, you'll notice a long silence gap at the end. I forgot that you can have the ability to pick the childs traits, and the window that popped up through me. I'm actually surprised I got to pick them for Thomas since he only learned to walk yesterday LOL, so Emily is hardly a model parent. I've also not read him any books and mostly left him to his own devices when it came to keeping himself entertained.

I also ended up stuffing up and exiting out of the window and didn't end up picking any trait at all. Another thing that surprised me - I didn't think you could have a child Sim with only two traits... Thankyou to @mcCutcheon on Twitter for helping me out with the testingCheatsEnabled true cheat that allowed me to pick Thomas his third trait: Computer Whiz. Although looking at his face, perhaps I should have followed in Adrian's footsteps and chosen Evil?

For those interested, here's the video of the "big day"... the big let down if you ask me. Poor guy.

Thomas Waters became a toddler last night. In a day that was bitter sweet, he had a smallish party with people he didn't know, and who most likely, didn't even like him. His father wasn't there, but he was finally able to do more than just coo, caa and gurgle. Thankfully, there was no cake fire, I don't think the family could handle any more tragedies at the moment.

In a twist I wasn't expecting, Thomas is a BALD toddler! I didn't even realise you could have bald toddlers lol, but I guess what you can have in real life can be simulated in game. Poor bugger, doesn't do his cuteness levels any good. And it kinda makes him look a little feminine...

To make up for it, Emily splashed a bit of the family savings around and repainted the spare room Adrian was using into Thomas' new bedroom. A bit bare at the moment, unfortunately not much Emily can do since family funds were already fairly skint, Adrian didn't have life insurance, and Emily just quit her job. I'm hoping to fill it up with a few toys soon.