The Gregory Legacy, Chapter 37

You guys. You guys. Celeste is so ready to be done being pregnant. Are you ready? This is not just the chapter for generation seven babies: we'll also get to see some toddlers. Excited? I am! I've been sitting on most of these pictures since January because life, but I've been dying to share them. Quick recap: Celeste got pregnant on her boring honeymoon to Granite Falls then spent most of last chapter pregnant because I take too many pictures, Rafael grew facial hair, some rooms moved around in the house, and Isaac grew up and got engaged. I think that's about it. Dive in . . .

Isaac is now leaving offerings in front of the mausoleum instead of dirty bowls, but it's kind of pointless because Day of the Dead is soooo over, and also he can talk to two or three of his ancestors just by hanging out by the fridge and/or gaming mats on any given night, so . . .

Celeste, despite being massively pregnant, is working on her new Leader of the Pack aspiration by having the Paragons over for a swimming party after completing the Soulmate aspiration late the previous night. It's all good fun. One of the nice things about clubs is it's one of the few ways to actually corral everyone into doing the same thing.

And Celeste even managed to pick the one swimsuit out of their five new available choices that's somewhat appropriate for such a pregnant lady.

Don't worry, though. That doesn't stop her from changing into her how-does-that-stay-on best as soon as the gathering is over.

Celeste: ". . . uh oh . . ."
Faye: "Something wrong, dear?"
Celeste: "Gotta go . . . baby . . . water broke . . . send Rafael . . . probably going to finish eggs and bacon first though . . ."
Faye: "Okay, I'll send Rafael, but your barely post-pubescent husband is not going to be much help, I can guarantee you that."
Celeste: "Mooooom!"
Faye: "Yeah, yeah, I'll go find him. Get yourself upstairs."

Rafael: "Oh man, oh man, oh man. I don't know if I'm ready for this."
Celeste: "Rafael! I need you!"

Celeste: "Raf, it hurts."
Rafael: "It's ok, baby. I'm here. Everything is going to be okay. I'm here now."

Rafael: "Nope, I'm out."
Baby: *poof sparkle sparkle*

Celeste: "I'm pretty sure Mom knows the best locations for shallow graves, but I do need another parent to help raise the babies. Hmm, decisions, decisions."

Babies?

Celeste: "Yeah, there's another one in my bedroom."

Yay! Our second set of twins in this legacy! Meet our two new little girls. I'll introduce them in a minute.

Rafael, I'm watching you.

Rafael: "I know! I'm proud of me, too!"

No, I . . . you know what, never mind.

On the left we have Eleanor, and on the right is Eileen. Eleanor was born first. Right now they are exactly identical, but that's not surprising considering there's like three baby skins for each gender. I really love these names and I thought they go together really well, so I've been waiting and hoping for female twins for forever, and the game finally delivered! Literally!

With the new Gregory spawn safely chilling in the nursery, Isaac is free to escape the house. He moved in with Yuki and her big sister Candy in the quaint town of Windenburg. We're here to get him set up.

Everyone has to race each other inside for no apparent reason, and Isaac, though it is hard to tell, is sick with a spotted disease. Excellent start.

While I was checking outfits for a wedding and poking around CAS, I noticed that Candy is abnormally thin. I mean, where does she keep her abdominal organs? I'm not here to bodyshame her, it's just, Maxis, I demand to know where a girl that spends that much time in clubs stores her liver. Just because you can with sliders, doesn't mean you should.

With everyone clothed and un-infected, we set up for a quickie wedding in the cute little front yard. Candy, don't you want to come inside the yard and celebrate your sister?

Candy: "I'm fine here."

Isaac and Yuki are very cute together, and they are no less cute saying their vows. I am very sure they will be happy.

Congrats to the lovely couple and, whoa, wait . . . zoom in to Candy.

That is not the face you make at your beloved sister's matrimony.

Candy: "But I'm the cute, blonde one from all the ads! Why is she getting a happy ending?"

Well, I mean, she is marrying a Gregory, so that's debatable . . .

Candy: "It's not fair!"

Jealousy aside, Candy still busted out her records to DJ for her sister and new brother-in-law's super romantic first dance. Some day - some day - couple's dancing will return and I will rejoice.

Since I've already pointed out Candy's bodily abnormalities, I feel it would be remiss of me not to also point out that they live in a deeply weird house. This house was built by a disgruntled intern on his last day at EA. In the kitchen, they have all their garden implements hung very sanitarily by the fridge underneath their café menu.

And in the hall, they have a dresser stuck halfway through a wall. I imagine the intern's thought process went something like this: "Man, it'd be great to put something that goes through a wall and holds clothes here. Something like a closet. Too bad we don't have closets. Or maybe they're making those with this pack? I can't remember. I can't even remember if I care. Eh, I'll just jam a dresser through a wall into an empty space exactly the size of a closet and call it good. I don't even care. I'm not even ashamed."

With that meditation on half-assedness, let's say goodbye for now to Isaac, his lovely new wife, and his weirdly jealous sister-in-law, as well as their bizarre house. I'm sure they'll have a great time. See ya around, Isaac!

Maybe sooner than later. Immediately upon loading the main lot, Isaac comes walking up the driveway, striding purposefully.

Andres: "Son! I have missed your presence for the last hour. Truly it is a gift to see you so soon, but what brings you here?"
Isaac: "Hey, Dad. I just . . . I just really . . . look, I missed our closet, ok? I need to prove to myself that they exist. Candy is messing with my mind and I found I couldn't remember. I'm just going to go check."
Andres: "That is very strange, but you do what you need to do. Do the thing."
Isaac: "I said to stop saying that!"

Meanwhile I found Faye actually cuddling her granddaughter. Ha, caught you being maternal!

Faye: "I'm just weighing them to see which will fetch the better black market price. Surely Celeste won't notice if only one goes missing."

Don't you dare.

Andres hit level 5 in gourmet cooking, and with it, met his Master Chef aspiration. All foods he makes now will forever stay good. He is going to be basically chained to this refrigerator to feed the remaining generations of this legacy. His new aspiration is Fabulously Wealthy. We have the funds, but weirdly enough he hasn't made as much as a chef as I thought he would have, so he'll have to keep working for a while.

Meanwhile, our gardener and gardener-in-training are hard at work keeping up the massive garden.

It's only gotten more massive, too. The whole outer row is all plants Rafael brought back from Granite Falls. He's growing them to work on his herbalism skill in the kitchen whenever I forget and release Andres from cooking duty. It pretty much takes one or both of them working on this around the clock to keep everything healthy. Eventually I'd like to splice a few more of these together to lighten the load but that takes planning to keep getting necessary quantities of everything I want, and I haven't been up for the planning yet.

Celeste comes home from work with a promotion in the critic career. With her skills, she's doing quite well despite just having started while she was pregnant. It's got her a little tense, though.

Rafael knows just the way to help her de-stress.

One thing leads to another, and before you know it . . .

Faye is fishing in Sylvan Glade. That's where you expected this transition to go, right? No? Well, anyway, she's still trying to scare up a final unique fish, but that's actually quite difficult, so moodlet solvers, good bait, and time it is.

After an uneventful day or two of fishing, we head back home to find our lovebirds and new parents . . . dejectedly making clay sculptures. Okay. Well, Celeste doesn't appear to be showing, but let's just be sure . . .

And?

Celeste: "I'm thinking another bunny. Maybe the Eiffel Tower."

No, the pregnancy test.

Celeste: "Oh, that. Negative."

You know what to do about that!

And so round two begins in these bathing suits that they've apparently been wearing for days. Gross. You may be thinking that even with Faye's fishing break, this seems awfully quick since the girls are not even toddlers yet. You would be correct. This was my old pattern, pre-toddlers, to keep the kids all relatively the same age. I had no clue how difficult toddlers might be to raise, but I figured it couldn't be that hard, right? Babies and kids are pretty easy to keep happy, even if you have a few of them at a time. What could it possibly hurt to have three toddlers at the same time?

Andres comes home with another promotion, stealing my attention away from his daughter getting busy.

In that amount of time, Celeste and Rafael found their way down to the tent in an attempt to fool around, but they were prevented from entering. This didn't stop Dayna from being mad about it.

Dayna: "They're trying to have more children, I just know it!"

Well, duh, Dayna. That's kind of the point of a legacy. Propagation and success over generations . . . which requires there to be generations. Hence, babymaking. You should know this. It's not like you weren't directly responsible for part of the line yourself.

Dayna: "Doesn't mean I approve."

Celeste and Rafael, redirected towards actually productive woohoo, still couldn't enter the tent, though none of my sims were sleeping in it. Figuring it might be bugged, I plopped down another one and made a mental note to try to fix it later. However, as soon as they started crawling into the larger, better tent, Marjorie - who apparently had been sleeping in the little tent - popped out of the smaller one . . .

. . . and complained about the noise. Ha ha, all of Celeste's child-hating ancestors are trying to block her at every turn, but she and Rafael succeeded.

They were very successful, in fact! Celeste is now pregnant with hopefully just their third (and final) child.

Rafael, who was preparing to spend the night in the little tent (the big one got deleted - if the little one is tempting to sleepy sims, the big one is nigh irresistible), heard the news, and wow, he is just thrilled, let me tell you. I'm not too impressed with his parenting style so far, but hopefully he'll be more useful once the girls are a little older.

In fact, since he was having to sleep through the night in the tent for it to count for his aspiration, it was a newly-pregnant Celeste who had to get up to tend the girls in the middle of the night. The girls weren't on a schedule together, so she actually had to get up a few times and didn't get a lot of sleep.

By the next day, Rafael was feeling chipper and Celeste, despite being pregnant and sleep-deprived, apparently still liked what she saw. They gathered together to grow up their twins as the time has come for the first Gregory toddlers!!! These were actually the first toddlers I played in my game at all, because I wanted to just dive right in and experiment. I figured, if I'm going to screw some kids up, where better than in a legacy?

I may have been too busy saying "Aww! So cute!" to actually take pictures of them learning to walk, so here's the first appearance of Eleanor and Eileen. I think Celeste has Eleanor but they are so not staying in these outfits, so I don't really remember which was which. They're freaking adorable even in mismatched outfits, though. I am so pleased with this implementation of toddlers, even if it did take way too long.

Here's Eleanor, the older twin! She is a Charmer, and I love that she got Faye's eyes, which apparently skip generations, and Rafael's red hair. She's so cute!

And here's Eileen, who is Inquisitive. She also has Faye's eyes and Rafael's hair. In fact, if you're thinking they look a lot alike - like, A LOT alike - you have sharp eyes. Take a look at this gif:

Eleanor and Eileen are exactly identical! The only differences are their haircuts and eyebrow shapes. I don't know why I gave them different eyebrows but I did, so just ignore that and notice their identical-ness. I'm really, really pleased with this turn of events, even if it means less overall diversity in the genetics this generation, since it seems like truly identical twins are harder to come by.

And these identical twins are super cute! We just need some toddler picspam now, so strap in.

Toddler hugs! So glad these returned!

Inquisitive Eileen thinks hard about her helicopter.

Eleanor is very surprised by what her dolly just said. Their big eyes just kill me.

Okay, enough picspam for now. Now it's time to actually raise these little cuties. Faye is the first to approach them in the playroom as Celeste needed a nap and Rafael ran off to who-knows-where.

Faye: "Okay, these are very small children. They're kind of freaking me out. I'm not 100% sure what to do with them."

Faye: "But shaking them down for spare change seems like a good start."

Despite what she may be saying, Faye is oddly good with these children. She wasn't horrible with her own, but she really seems to love being a grandmother. She was always on top of the baby feedings and now she just loves to play with the girls.

Eileen had some whim to talk to a stranger but then it made her upset. Of course, that stranger was my simself. Don't hurt my feelings, Eileen! I'm no stranger than anyone that lives in your house.

After her nap, Celeste joins Faye is spending time with the girls. They played for a good long time because they had just been fed before they grew up.

Soon, though, they got tired and cranky, so their parents read them to sleep. I am just having so much fun with these little guys, but having two of them definitely takes more sims to manage. They have to work in shifts to keep on top of everything.

When they woke up, I didn't have anyone available to feed them, so they ate Caesar salad from a bowl placed on the floor. Seems like good toddler care to me.

Eileen had a successful first potty session, but it was a bit of a misadventure for Eleanor. She missed the potty and got a sad moodlet for it. This was funny . . . the first time it happened. Eleanor missed the potty every time she went, so taking her to the potty also meant mopping for whichever lucky adult Gregory pulled the short straw that time.

Celeste: "Grandma! Oh my God! It's so good to see you!"
Laurel: "You too, sweetie! Look at you - pregnant? How far along?"
Celeste: "Not very, but this is actually my second. I have twins!"
Laurel: "You've got to catch me up on everything!"

Celeste: "And here's Eleanor missing the potty. Here's one of Eileen chewing on a toy. Here's Eileen eating salad. Here's Eleanor taking a bath. Oh, and here's her missing the potty again. Eileen, Eileen, Eleanor, Eileen, Eleanor. Another play session. Another bath. Another missed potty."
Laurel: "You do know you don't have to take pictures of everything, right?"
Celeste: "Are you kidding? I'm a first time mom!"

Celeste had been attending to the toddlers all day when I realized she was supposed to be working from home that day. She was able to get everything done except she needed to review a performance in the Arts Quarter. Only problem was that it pretty late at night, but at least she ran into Laurel, which made it fun for me. I love the idea of Celeste sharing all these pictures of her babies with her ghostly grandmother.

And she ran into her aunt Hannah.

Celeste: "Hannah, where do I need to go to review a performance? I can't find anyone performing."
Hannah: "You could try coming back not at 3 a.m."
Celeste: "What are you doing here at 3 a.m. then?"
Hannah: "Hey, you don't put a bar in a museum and expect me not to attend whenever I darn well please!"

So Celeste's late night trip to the Arts Quarter was not very productive, but she still has another day before she goes into work so she can try again. When she got home, the girls instantly needed stuff - a recurring theme - so she went right to work with them without getting any shut-eye. These toddlers may be the most adorable, but good gracious are they needy. I appreciate the realism, but it's requiring a totally different structure for my play style.

Celeste: "Why is everything in my life disgusting?"

Maybe if your eldest daughter could go in the potty, things would work a little better in the household. Just a suggestion. Feel free to pass it on to her. Eleanor is a potty-missing miracle. It also doesn't help that Rafael has barely come near them.

But Eleanor and Eileen are just so gosh darn cute that I don't even care how hard this is. I took so many pictures of them, so it's a wonder this post isn't twice as long as it is.

Faye and Andres are getting up there in years, and I need their help so badly (I had no idea how badly I would need it once the third comes along!), so they had their potions. Remember this - it becomes important in a later chapter.

And that brings us to the end of the chapter. Toddlers in The Gregory Legacy! I honestly wasn't sure we would ever see this day but I am so, so glad we did. They are everything I could have wanted and more. The twins and their younger sibling are children in my game right now, so I still have quite a bit to catch up on, but we're getting there. Next time we'll get to meet the younger sibling, see the twins continue to learn and grow, and see if Rafael is ever going to contribute to childcare, among other goings-on. Thanks for reading, and check in with me at SiMania and Boolprop! <3