Generation 4: Part 14. Butterflies and Hurricanes

Now that everybody had made new friends, the house was never empty. At least one of our kids always brought somebody home from school and often they did their homework in a group of four or five people. The older ones helped the younger ones out, which was really cute. I’m sure they all learned a lot during those times!

Something I learned was that toddlers grow up really fast. In the last days I hadn’t paid any attention to Julia, our youngest, and without us knowing she aged to a child. There was just so much going on in the house that we missed it! Something that is absolutely unforgivable.

But that wasn’t even the worst part. Being forgotten over and over again apparently changed something in her. She started running around, talking to herself and even arguing with her. Also she sometimes seemed to be in a fight with somebody who was not there but made her hand act on its own! There was no better explanation – she had gone insane!

Our dog Flip was also still alive. Once in a while I saw him run through the house or in front of his food, but I didn’t interact with him much. Grace mostly took care of that and went out for a walk with him regularly – something he really needed but I couldn’t give him because of my age. I felt that my body was ready to give up, which was something terrible. And I definitely wanted to see more of my kids age up, so I decided to step back a little.

It was impressing to see how Ivy had changed. But then again, she had always had good relationships with her sisters and her brother. Still it was nice to see her getting along well with them. If only she picked up some of the seriousness Henner showed about school…

With everything going better in the new house, Cassie decided to work on something she wanted to achieve so bad. Her writing career had practically been non-existent, especially since she didn’t like computers. I even bought her a notebook and a pencil in her favorite color, but she didn’t touch it once. Instead she started spending some time on the computer again and one night told me she was working on an autobiography.

We couldn’t really believe that there was time to do something that felt good for us, but there was. Grace hang out with Marissa, Henner was busy with school and the three other ones always found someone or something to play with. It seemed like all of a sudden we weren’t needed any longer.

See what I mean? Henner missed not one homework and soon was on the honor roll of his school. We were so proud of him!

Life was getting really good during our last days.

Something we didn’t like to watch was Grace befriending some guy she met at school. It was obvious that he was interested in her in a way we didn’t approve, since she was way too young for that! Her first romance was not supposed to happen before she graduated from high school!

Luckily she wasn’t interested in him in the same way. This way we could save some arguments with her and go to sleep without one ear staying awake and listening to what was going on out there at night.

It seemed like all of us could really calm down after all. Of course stuff happened all the time, but all in all we now were where we wanted to be. We had a happy, big family with five kids we could be proud of. Especially Henner made me so proud, since he turned out to be so much like me.

Well, you might call him my favorite. I know we were not supposed to have favorites, but I couldn’t help myself. He was everything to me.

Just when everything looked so good, something terrible happened. Flip had been walking slower and slower every day, but no one had expected him to die already. The Grim Reaper had other plans, which was heartbreaking for all of us. We were going to miss him so much, even though I hadn’t seen him much lately. After all, he had been our family dog!

 Author's Notes: Rest in Peace, Flip! :( He had been around forever and then he suddenly died, that made me very sad... But it's not like there was much time to mourn, because so much was going on! When writing the story, I feel like nothing happens and like I'm repeating myself over and over again, but some stuff still DOES happen. Like Julia's birthday. They didn't teach her all three skills and now she is insane. I have never played with an insane sim before, just read about some. So that should be interesting.

Chapter title: An amazing song by Muse, which I thought fitted nicely here. There are good things happening (butterflies), as well as bad ones (hurricanes).

Generation 4: Part 13. Hier kommt der Ärger

All of our kids were developing independence which made us so proud. Ivy had only been in school for a few days now and already stayed outside to study in the afternoon. Well, at least that is what she told us. Her grades weren’t really showing that she studied hard, but maybe her studies were just not that effective. For us she still was a responsible kid who learned how to take care of herself, but when she once yelled at us that she only stayed outside to avoid us as long as possible, everything changed at once. Never had we assumed that we were driving one of our kids away and we couldn’t possibly imagine how that could have happened! Whenever one of our kids had a problem, they could come to us and we then tried to solve it. Sure, sometimes when we were stressed out from a long day we would tell them to solve their problems on their own or to come back later, but who didn’t? And apart from that we were really good parents, that we were sure of. Cassie more than one time broke down in tears and I tried to convince her that it was in Ivy’s nature to hurt the people around her, that it really wasn’t our fault. She still believed that we were doing something wrong, but at least I managed to believe myself. She had an evil character and tried to harm us, not the other way round.

While Ivy spend most of her time outside our house (for whatever reasons), Bella took up painting really quick. She did her homework conscientiously and as soon as she was done, she ran outside to the easel and continued working on her pictures. We could tell she was not a natural, but the patience she showed while painting really impressed us. If something didn’t work out, she didn’t stop altogether, but erased what she had just done wrong and started again. This reminded me of my father, who had also been interested in painting. But in contrary to Bella, he had stopped for a couple of weeks whenever something hadn’t looked the way he had wanted it to. It was funny that some of our children had inherited my father’s hair while others had the same hobbies as him.

Grace, Henner and Bella were children we didn’t need to worry about. They did their homework on time, had reasonable friends and didn’t come home late for any reasons. Sure, Grace was alone a great amount of her time, but we had realized that it didn’t matter as long as she was happy. And she obviously was.

Knowing that our kids were doing well, I could really focus on my job and the last promotion I needed so bad. And what can I say – I got it! My boss told me that I had been working like crazy the last days and finally promoted, which meant that my lifetime wish – to reach a certain level in four careers – had been fulfilled! Now I could lean back and watch my children grow up, something I wanted so badly for a long time. A day after the promotion I called my boss and told him I’d quit. Every day was so precious now that I didn’t want to waste it in a stuffy building.

Something I realized pretty late was that we were the only ones Ivy was angry at. She got along great with her older siblings, especially with Bella and Henner. There was some kind of distance between her and Grace, but the other ones liked her a lot. Not knowing why she was acting like this was almost too much to take. But there was nothing we could do about this, since talking didn’t seem to work.

Before we could worry about this some more, it was Grace’s birthday! It was unbelievable that her childhood was already over and that she was aging into a (hopefully) responsible teenager. Was the household getting more organized now or did this mean total chaos and new moods we had to face daily?

Honestly, it didn’t matter to me as soon as I saw her as a teen for the first time. My little girl was absolutely beautiful! There was no way she could have mood swings or anything. She was just perfect.

Her birthday party in the garden was pretty successful – all of us sat together at one big table we had borrowed from a friend and talked for hours. Even Ivy stayed there the entire time and didn’t say anything nasty or disrespectful. We should have birthday parties more often!

Another thing that was great about having a teen in the house, besides her independence: she took care of the other kids as well! Julia had often been neglected by us, which we were really sorry about. But with all the trouble we were going through with Ivy, there was almost no time left for her. Grace cared about her a lot and often was there before us when Julia started crying. The two black-haired girls really had a deep relationship.

When Grace wasn’t busy taking care of her siblings, she kept the house clean. This was something I personally couldn’t understand (because I was absolutely sure that neither I nor my sister Freya had ever been that way), but of course it was nice to see. She kept explaining that she wouldn’t use the dishwasher, because she was afraid that it would flood the house. At first I thought she hated everything technical, but it turned out that she was just afraid of anything damaging the house at all. Sometimes she even seemed a little neurotic to us.

Despite her little flaw she was loved and respected by everybody in the family. I can’t stop talking about Ivy’s behavior, because it was such a big mystery to us – as soon as Grace had aged up, Ivy went to her to talk about things. Grace seemed like some kind of mother to her, which of course hurt Cassie really badly, but I was just glad she was talking to someone about problems instead of doing stupid things.

As I got more and more curious about how my sister was doing, I decided to go over to her house one day. I hadn’t seen her for ages and thought that it would be nice to see what she was up to. Unfortunately she wasn’t there; instead I met my niece Anna, who was about Grace’s age. She seemed really nice, although she kept asking me awkward questions about our financial situation. I guess, she wanted to find out if we could support her a little, since Freya was rather broke. But apart from that our talk went well and I promised to call more often. After all, this was family, too!

Family. A word for something so important, for the most important thing in the world. I was sad to see that Ivy kept ignoring this. Whatever we did or tried, it didn’t work.

And then something changed. I don’t know what it was, maybe that we moved into a new house. That’s right, the old house had just gotten too small for seven people and a dog, so we moved to a house with just one floor, but more rooms. [As usual, I forgot to take a picture of the entire house. I’ll try and remember to take one the next time I’m playing!] All of a sudden Ivy started opening up to us and talked. This was all we were asking for – our daughter talking to us. Of course she had some moody days, but all in all it got a lot better as soon as we had finished our move.

Like I said, everything got better. Grace found new friends in high school and was soon seen with Marissa Pinkerton, her cousin, in all her spare time. They did homework together and they gossiped about boys and girls from their classes. We were so glad to see Grace catching up with the other side of the family and –at the same time – making friends with people their age. For so long she had been on her own, it was time that she found really good friends. After all, we weren’t going to be around forever and it was time that somebody else took care of her.

Author's notes:  Yay, we're getting closer and closer to the point where I'm at! All the kids become more different every day. Bella is interested in painting and helping other people, Grace takes care of her siblings and meets with Marissa daily, Henner is working hard for school and Ivy mostly is nothing but trouble. It if weren't five sims, I would almost like to watch them all interact in the sims world. But I really can't do that ^_^

Chapter title: A German song by the (also German) musician Michy Reincke, the translation means "Here comes trouble". When I read the song title, I immediately thought of Ivy...

Generation 4: Part 12. Respect.

With five children in the house we had not one moment to ourselves. One of the three little ones was always crying or demanding attention otherwise, while Grace and Henner completely were on their own. I barely saw them during the day, also because I was at work most of the time. Cassie had quitted work some time ago, because we couldn’t handle the household with both of us being out all day. At first we were worried that I didn’t earn enough money for all of us, but that wasn’t necessary. We sure weren’t rich, but we were doing fine, at least when it came to the money. Often we would find ourselves sitting somewhere, just staring straight ahead of us. All this trouble was getting too much for us, but there was nothing we could do about that. We chose to have five children (well, more or less) and now we had to deal with that. Whenever Cassie told me she felt nothing but tired, I snapped at her that I felt the exact same way but that nobody would care about that, either. Later I was sorry for getting angry at her, but there was no energy to feel sorry for her. There was not even enough energy to manage a smile.

Nevertheless our life had to go on. Cassie tried hard to teach the twins everything they needed for life, which worked well with Bella. Walking and talking were really easy, while she had a few problems with her potty-training. But eventually she did fine, like always. I was really proud of my little girl.

As if five children were not enough, Henner decided to have a sleepover on one weekend. He begged us to let him have it and as soon as we agreed, he started calling all of his friends. Most of them we had never seen before, but apparently he knew them pretty well. It was one of those days where everything had gone wrong and I just wanted to go to bed early, but Henner never asked for anything else, so we decided to let him have some fun. He earned it. And after all, it was a nice weekend – all of the kids behaved really well and even cleaned the dishes they used!

Something we had completely forgotten that happened that weekend also – Cassie’s birthday! Of course she had known, but she didn’t want to be reminded of that. Her elder birthday meant no more children for us, something I was really happy about, as I still regretted having Julia. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my little daughter, like all of them! But I simply couldn’t handle it any longer, which is why I also longed for Bella’s and Ivy’s birthday! Two more children meant concentrating on Julia the most.

Cassie celebrated her birthday by spending the entire evening in the hot tub, on her own. She left it to me to take care of all the kids inside and told me about having time for herself. I couldn’t believe it! I was stressed, too, but I didn’t just walk away from the misery. But then again, it was her birthday, so I probably was supposed to cut her some slack. Maybe I was just sad because she didn’t want to spend any time with me on her special night.

As the night progressed, all of the foreign children fell asleep and it was only me and the toddlers. Bella was busy with the doll house, so once again I tried to teach Ivy how to walk. This time she seemed really interested and we made good progress, although one time I almost squashed her when she pulled me over instead of standing up. But no one got hurt.

Later that night I found myself on bed with Cassie. She had returned from the hot tub, all relaxed, and we had a really good and long talk that had been necessary. It felt so good to speak about everything that was on my mind and to make up with her.

Soon it was time for the day that was supposed to change our life once more – the twins’ birthday! Bella and Ivy were aging up into school children. It was exciting to see them age, but at the same time it was a great relief. Only that it didn’t work out the way we thought it would, because only Bella aged up into a child. That night we found her walking into the wrong rooms over and over again, tripping over something or stopping to walk, wondering why she was heading there. It was cute to watch her being some kind of absent-minded.

The other kid who surprisingly aged up that night was our littlest one, Julia! She turned out to have her grandfather’s hair, which was really great. Grace and her both had inherited his hair color, a great reminder of the old times. And although they had never met him, they were now connected to him somehow. [And yes, I like that hairstyle]

Julia was incredible. She seemed to sense that we were more than exhausted, so she played on her own most of the time. We actually couldn’t get her away from the toys to teach her things, because she was so busy all the time.

 During one of those evenings when I tried to gently pull her away from the dollhouse, I felt really strange. Everything was spinning around me and I could hardly keep my eyes open. The previous night had been really short and the day at work had been extremely hard. I was so close to getting the last promotion, after which I would have completed my lifetime wish. All that excitement led to me passing out right in front of my smallest daughter! Julia screamed when she saw me lying on the floor, which made Cassie come over to see what was going on. She was shocked to see me there, and immediately dragged me to bed, where she later told me that she had arranged some days off work for me. I apparently needed a break and she gave me the opportunity. I wasn’t too happy about it, since so much work had to be done and that meant waiting for the promotion even longer, but my health was also pretty important, I guess.

Finally Ivy’s birthday was there as well! [You see, I really, really like that hairstyle!] When we went to congratulate her, she slapped our hands away and told us to get lost. Wow, what was going on there? Tears sprung to Cassie’s eyes, being rejected by her own daughter. But Ivy just laughed at her, like some really evil person. She was quite the opposite of Bella, that was for sure!

That difference between her and her sister reflected in her entire behavior – at night Ivy often would sneak out of bed and play video games for hours. A few times we caught her and told her to go to bed again, but she didn’t really listen to us. This one was a real troublemaker!

Fortunately Julia was easier to handle than her older sister. She enjoyed time with us, but continued being on her own a lot. We were still not sure if this was a good thing, to be honest. But for now, it helped a lot.

Author's Notes: So yeah, I am just really motivated to write at the moment :) Julia really got Felipe's hair, which is awesome.  That was about the only GOOD thing that happened in this chapter - Ivy getting the evil trait was a bit of a shock. Apparently, I had forgotten about her potty-training and this how they reward me for that. She is the total opposite of her sister Bella, who is friendly AND good! 

According to my notes, there are four more chapters before a possible heir vote, but maybe I can put the pictures into three chapters, as well. I really want to find out who is going to be heir! Apparently, writing about the family does make me want to play more. That is a good sign!

Chapter title is a song by Aretha Franklin which I really love. And it fits since Ivy does not pay their parents any respect, AT ALL!

Generation 4: Part 11. Isn't she lovely.

Having five children was something really big, and I wasn’t really sure if we were able to cope with that. Some might say that having five was almost like having four, plus one, but there really was more to that. It meant more responsibility, it meant watching out for another small human being and it meant having another baby crying in the middle of the night. I was way too old for that by now and I was afraid Cassie soon would be, too. But she promised me over and over that we would be okay. Grace and Henner were already big enough to help us out sometimes, even if it was clear that we wouldn’t make them spend all of their free time taking care of their little siblings. We were their parents and it was our task to make sure they were alright. While we talked about this, we had some weird noises from Ivy’s and Isabella’s bedroom, which was next door. When we ran over to see what was going on, we had to watch our two little ones grow up! How on earth could we take care of a fifth child if we forgot about two birthdays at the same time?!

Isabella got her mother’s hair and also her nose, I think. She really turned out beautiful and especially fond of the color red. 

We had been curious about our twins’ hair, of course. Grace had gotten her grandfather’s, while Henner looked like an exact replica of me. Isabella apparently had her mother’s and we could now see that Ivy had some weird mixture between Cassie and me. Her hair was less colorful and could have been her grandmother’s (Cassie’s mom, remember her? The one that hit on me). Nevertheless she was a sweet girl as well and we couldn’t wait to see her make the first steps in life. Literally.

Their older siblings hadn’t realized their birthday, either. Instead they spent their free time outside in our beautiful garden, playing with each other. It seemed like Grace only enjoyed her brother’s company and preferred being alone apart from that. It seemed like she had developed in some kind of loner and we weren’t sure whether to worry about that. But since Cassie sometimes felt the exact same way, we figured she was going to be okay.

The more kids we had, the more they started being on their own. Whenever I was off to work, Cassie didn’t have to take care of our little ones, because they were doing great. Ivy had found the doll house and spent hours playing with it. And Isabella enjoyed playing with all the toys we had bought them, too. Sometimes Cassie practically had to drag them away from what they were doing so that they could learn how to walk and talk. We knew that it didn’t make sense to force children to learn something, because then they wouldn’t be very successful. Each child was so different and we had to respect that by not treating them the exact same way. When children want to learn, they will learn, so we tried to find the perfect moments to get together with them. This turned out to be really difficult, but we made it. At least partly.

Isabella was very eager about talking and it seemed like she couldn’t be taught fast enough. This was so great! I wondered whether she would be in a job that required talking and the appropriate use of language later, like journalism or as a freelance writer. But back to the present, how can I could about her future if she didn’t even go to school yet?!

Ever since Cassie had told me she was pregnant, we had barely talked. I was still so unsure of whether we would be up to that and partly blamed her for it. I know that it takes two to make a baby, but she was carrying that little person in her body, not me, so to me it seemed it was more hers than ours. But one night, when we had put the children to bed, we talked for a long time and made up. We were going to make it. 

And while Ivy apparently was not somebody who appreciated learning, her sister loved the attention Cassie and I gave her. She was the first one who knew how to talk and also the one who was able to walk earlier than Ivy. Still, that was fine with us. At least most of the time.

When it came to learning and education, Isabella and Henner clearly were on the same path. Henner was much more independent than his little sister, of course, and so he spent his afternoons with reading books or working on some skills. I was so proud of my only boy so far. Who knew, maybe our fifth child was another boy!

He also enjoyed playing video games (and I’m sorry to say this, but he sucked at them), which felt like he was trying to remind himself that he was still a kid and supposed to have fun once in a while.

I know I’m repeating myself, but we were so proud of our two oldest kids. Henner was working hard for school and Grace really tried to keep our house clean. Surely this was Cassie’s task, but as her pregnancy progressed, she wasn’t able to do some of the stuff she used to do before. So Grace jumped in and became some kind of second mother, something we really appreciated.

Unfortunately the independence of Grace of Henner meant that we didn’t really interact with them much anymore, instead we focused on Bella (that’s shorter and sweeter, don’t you think?) and Ivy having a good time. At least I sometimes tried to do something with our oldest, but Cassie sometimes didn’t talk to them for days. This was something we had to change!

The only relief was the good relationship between Grace and Henner, because it meant that somebody was there for them. 

And that wasn’t about to change when Cassie surprisingly went into labor one afternoon! None of us had expected it this early, but after her water broke, it was clear to us that she was about to give birth. [I have no idea who that teenage girl is, I swear] While I stayed at home to have an eye on our kids, she rushed to the hospital to give birth to our fifth child, a sweet baby…

Girl! We named her Julia. Cassie told me later that on the way back from the hospital Julia had blinked in the rhythm of the song that was played on the taxi’s radio. It seemed like we had a little virtuoso amongst us! Or would she be more artistic in general? We weren’t sure about that. But here we were, with five children, all so different from each other. Five young personalities were about to develop and all of them were our responsibility. The next years were going to be tough.

Author's notes: We are back! Sorry it took me so long, but after we were done moving, there was so much to do around here. I had three presentations during the last two weeks (whic may not seem much, but it was a lot of work preparing them) and also I didn't really want to go on with the story. There was just some point where I didn't care about my family any more, maybe because seven sims is so much that I'm almost afraid to start the game. But since I've played way ahead, I now forced myself to get on with the story. As soon as I know who is going to be heir, I maybe can kick people out, even if I like them. So for now this is a little update on what is happening over there, or what has happened the last times I was playing. Good news - while writing this chapter, I thought that I might like to play again soon. So after the next 2-3 chapters there will be an heir vote and after that I can finally get on with the game.

The chapter's title is a beautiful song by Stevie Wonder (that I've sung in a choir workshop last year or so), who wrote this for his newborn daughter. So this fitted just perfectly! :)