From the Ground Up:A Towering Legacy

Chapter Eleven:Chaos and Kids

Welcome back to From the Ground Up, where we’re THIS CLOSE to getting the fourth floor!

Last time, Poppy went on several dates with Samuel Cormier, local slob, and graduated. There was also a lot of hula dancing, and video games. Oh, and a wedding, right at the end.

Enough of that, let’s get some babies born!

But first, Poppy brought home a gypsy lamp, and her parents have a handful of days left before elderhood – it made sense to make them permaplat.

“Behold! I am the genie of the lamp!”

“As expected. Make me happy.”

“Could you be more specific?”

Jazz had been close to permaplat, but then she got fired (stupid chance cards) so it’s a good thing we have a genie afterall.

“That should do the trick. Anything else you require?”

“No, I guess you can go back inside your little lamp.”

“I’ll have you know my ‘little lamp’ is quite roomy on the inside.”

Eventually, the family went back into the tower and carried on with normality. As if anything about this family is normal.

“The genie made my life worthwhile, now I can spend all my time on the drums!”

Exactly. So normal.

Another day passes, and Jazz has a birthday.

“Will you guys stop cheering? Growing old is not a good thing!”

“But free cake is! *tooot*”

Jazz doesn’t look very different if you ask me. A graceful transition.

Apart from Poppy in the background.

“You’re next, Dad.”

It really is a day for transitioning, as Poppy finds herself popping into pregnancy.

Can you feel the legacy moving forward? :D

Also, the garden was harvested, and the family has sparkly food for the first time! I just thought you’d like to know.

That doesn’t mean work on the garden is finished, though. Plenty of time before winter to get another harvest in!

Though I don’t think pesticides are good for the baby.

There’s something about Jazz’s video game face that reminds me of her father. I miss Dorian.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to-”

“Stop it, Poppy! I don’t wanna get old. They’ll make me wear a shirt!”

Unfortunately for Jim, they don’t make grass skirts for elders, so for the first time this challenge, he’ll have to wear proper clothes.

Still, he’s not grown up badly.

And with both Jazz and Jim permaplat, they should be around long enough to meet their grandkids – Samuel wants to marry off six babies.

So yes, I’m going to try and cram six kids into the tower.

And now we’re one step closer to the arrival of the first one! Hooray!

Proof that Jim now wears a shirt. And also proof that age doesn’t slow down the hula. We’re never going to be rid of it!

Hooray, it’s baby time! And Aurora is out for the occasion, too.

Meet Leela, named after the purple-haired cyclops in Futurama.

Why is Samuel holding her, you ask?

That would be because of Leela’s twin.

This is Johnny, he’s named after Dr John Zoidberg from Futurama.

The theme this generation is cartoons, by the way.

Not only does the arrival of the twins mean we only have four kids left to go until we can stop, it also means we get another floor to the house!

Now who would like a guided tour of the tower?

This is the new floor. The bedroom is currently intended to be Leela and Johnny’s when they grow enough to need beds, but the room can fit in one extra bed if necessary.

I also quite like the little living area in the bottom right.

The third floor is pretty much the same, except the drum kit was moved in order to put in a new staircase.

Also, Poppy and Samuel have moved into the bedroom up here, and the elders now sleep on the bottom floor.

The second floor has been opened up – mostly because I was tired of people standing in the way of the stairs.

I’ll have to close it back up when more babies arrive, but for now it looks like this.

The bottom floor hasn’t changed. But I do have some ideas for some alterations I want to make to it, so it’s only a matter of time, really.

And because I took virtually no shots of their infancy, the twins grew into toddlers. Leela went first as she’s the oldest (but only just).

Leela takes mostly after her Dad, and has a personality of 2/6/7/5/8

Johnny, however, got his Dad’s eyes but the rest of him resembles Poppy (I think).

He has a personality of 7/6/0/6/8

After the twins grew up, Poppy and Samuel got straight to work on the next baby. Or babies, if they have twins again.

A new generation of sims means more sims to block the stairs. Or to complain about the stairs.

Toddlers do that anyway, but it’s even worse in a tower.

It is great having the kids around, though. This floor has two snapdragons on it, which is pretty handy.

And with the kids busy and their motives not dropping too quickly, there’s more time for romance!

Jazz and Jim are still cute together.

Also, Jazz keeps bringing people home from work and then I find them hours later practising dancing on the 4th floor. No one goes up there, really. Just the visitors.

Who then complain that they were invited to stay the night, but didn’t get any sleep. As if it were the family’s fault!

Because of the snapdragons, the family is mostly found on the second floor. Well, that’s my theory, anyway.

Why else would they hang out there all the time?

Well, we all know what the glowing bottle means!

I used to play without any of the aspiration rewards or things like snapdragons. Now I’ve learnt just how USEFUL they are and use them most of the time.

The toddler-training event takes place in the garden, because that’s apparently the best place for it.

Leela did really well, and learnt to walk before her bottle wore off. Johnny didn’t do quite as well.

However, I’d say Johnny wins a booby prize for being cute. I didn’t even know toddlers could sleep in the pet houses!

Leela wasn’t content with being out-cuted by her brother, and hugged Dash. He just looks sad that he lost his dog house to a toddler.

While all of that was happening, I remodelled the kitchen slightly. The dining table was causing routing problems, so I did away with it and put in island counters.

There’s also a sofa for those who don’t get to sit at the island.

Oh! And a TV on the wall! Which the family ends up falling in love with, by the way.

That night, Poppy starts showing her pregnancy. I can’t wait to meet the toddler.

To be honest, I’m wondering how the family will cope with six kids. Johnny and Leela spend most of their time complaining that the relatives they want to follow are up or down a flight of stairs.

And I’m not saying Pleasure sims make bad parents, but Johnny and Leela have mostly been raised by their grandparents.

Poppy rolled the want to teach Leela how to walk, but only after she’d been bought a bowling alley, an expensive stereo and a car. All of which sit unused in her inventory.

Oh man, how many babies is she carrying this time? Poppy seems bigger than when she was carrying the twins…

“Who are you, and how long have you been up here?”

“I came home with Jazz, and twelve hours.”

“Ugh! She puked on me!”

Leela looks delighted by this. The joys of motherhood, right?

Get one last look at these cuties as toddlers, because it’s time for their birthday!

And I think Dash has grown fond of Leela. After all the hugging, it was bound to happen.

And here they are! Cute little sims. I like them both

Leela is definitely her father’s daughter, whereas Johnny looks a bit more like his mother.

The first thing Leela does after ageing up s start a band with Grandpa, which I thought was adorable.

Johnny didn’t seem quite as impressed, though.

“Leela, you’d rather hang out with Grandpa than me?”

Poppy ends up helping Johnny get into the swing of things, which was also cute.

This family is like 90% adorableness in case you hadn’t noticed.

Hooray, it’s baby time! I’m very excited to see what this one looks like – and whether or not they’ll inherit Poppy’s eyes!

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome baby Tina! She’s a redhead with green eyes, which don’t look like bug-eyes at this stage.

Tina is named after the awkward teenage daughter from Bob’s Burgers.

“Oh, neat! Can we play with it, Mum?”

“Not until she’s older, you two.”

“Awww, really?”

Tina was put into a cot rather quickly, and no time was wasted with adding to the brood.

“HEY EVERYONE! Look at me!”

“Woo, Leela!”

“That is very impressive, Leela!”

Everyone in the household who isn’t in bed would rather pay attention to Leela than put Tina in her cot.

“Thank you! I’ll be here all week!”

I have discovered Jazz is rolling wants for Samuel. I just have to hope ACR doesn’t act on them, right? I’m certainly not going to do it.

I feel bad for Jim, and yet nothing has happened. Yet.

“You’re married to a woman who has a crush on me, and I find that offensive!”

“You’re married to my daughter, I find your attitude offensive!”

The kids did the typical thing, and ran away crying from the fight. I was surprised to find that Leela was more upset than Johnny was. Jim tried his best to cheer her up.

“Oh Leela, please stop crying. I don’t completely hate your father.”

“Grandpa, you’re not very good at this.”

“It’s just he’s such a slob!”

Samuel burped, “Well I can’t deny the truth.”

I’m not entirely sure this is helping Leela. But they mean well, right? Maybe?

The day the twins started school was the day I found out they have matching outerwear. How cute is that?

Neither twin looks thrilled about school, though.

And that night, Tina grew up! She look lot like her Dad, I think.

She has a quite extreme personality of 2/10/3/10/10 which should make for some interesting antics in the future!

And this is where I’ll leave you this time!

See you soon!