Welcome back to the Gregory legacy! When we last left Marjorie she was . . .“Despising you.”That’s rude. And you interrupted my introduction. Ahem. When we last left . . .“But I’m pregnant! Why am I pregnant? I hate children, and being pregnant, and even pregnant pauses. I would probably hate litters of puppies if we had them. This is awful. How could you get me pregnant?”I just want to point out that technically your husband did that, not me. Let’s be clear here. Anyway, as you can see, Marjorie is both pregnant and majorly tense from it.

Here she is sharing the big news with Nathan by combining into some kind of chimeric Nathorie monstrosity. Nathorie? Marjan? Whatever. I never really got portmanteau couple names. Anyway! Nathan seems a whole lot less excited about it than Marjorie does, but that’s probably because he knows he’ll have to basically raise the child by himself since Marjorie will be too busy stomping around the house and having her “yell at” interactions canceled by me. Can’t you just feel the family love already?

Corinne had to bake her own birthday cake. Marjorie has a wee bit of cooking skill, but by and large, most meals in the house are made by Corinne. She can even make gourmet meals now. Anyway, birthday time.

Corinne is becoming an actual adult! This is the most I think I’ve ever actually played a spare. Corinne and Dorian have been hanging out to help around the house and, in Dorian’s case, help Marjorie earn money, and I was toying with having them stay on permanently, but I wasn’t sure. I felt kind of bad having them basically be indentured servants, but they are deeply helpful.

Back to Corinne. Happy birthday, firstborn child of the Gregorys!

“Thanks. We’ve decided to stay, by the way. Stick around, help out, that sort of thing.”

That’s awfully nice of you.

“Yeah, well, we do have an interest in seeing this legacy succeed, and our sister is a bit of a handful, and we’d really like to see the line continue. Besides, frankly, you need all the help you can get.”

Gee, thanks. I think.

“I’m going to be a mom. Okay, I can handle this. I’m going to get bigger and bigger and then . . . oh god! Childbirth and diapers and feedings and then school and it’ll probably want to be played with and loved or some shit and . . .”“Marjorie, breathe. Nothing’s happening yet, and you’ll have the three of us to help out.”*deep breath*“Okay, I can handle this. No big deal.”

The next day . . .*sob* “Corinne, what were we thinking? How am I going to raise a child when I can’t even stand the sight of one? And this pregnancy is killing me!”“Are you sick?”“No.”“Does it hurt?”“Not yet.”“Then you’re fine. You’re just a little tense. Go take a shower and you’ll feel better.”

“Still tense. FYI anyone that cares. Which is apparently no one.”

Marjorie had a tense moodlet her entire pregnancy instead of the happy one. It made her a bit difficult to work with, but she had a fairly easy pregnancy for the most part. No critical needs and no morning sickness.

Marjorie has a tendency of turning a conversation with others into an awkward conversation. I think this may be the insane trait at work. Who knows what she talks about?

“So after we leave it in the woods to be raised by wolves, we can go back to living in a nice, child-free house.”“Marjorie, there’s no such thing as wolves, and you’re not abandoning your baby.”“That’s what you think. If woohoo with Nathan wasn’t so good, I wouldn’t even be in this predicament, so really it’s his fault for being a woohoo machine.”“Awkward.”

“You know, the more I think about it, I think I know who’s really at fault.”

Uh oh. Is it me? I think she’s going to blame me.

“Look what you did to me!”

“Well, technically, babe, we did it together.”

“Nope, this one is on you, buddy. I think you should carry this little monster.”

“Marjorie, I would if I could. I’m going to do everything in my power to raise our child well without involving you. Just . . . please . . . calm down about it.”

“Okay, I forgive you for now, but don’t you ever do it again.”

“That wasn’t really what I was looking for, but I’ll take it.”

“So . . . troubles with the wife then?”

“You have no idea.”

“Oh, I have some idea. Bishop to E3.”

Now that I removed the graveyard fence, the ghosts come and go freely in the night and then return in the morning, like they’re supposed to. While Marjorie wraps up some late-night programming for her job in the tech guru career, Jaron shows up and gets inspired by the aura from the computers, which Corinne unlocked in the writer career.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning while everyone is in bed, he paints a picture of the social bunny for us. I love that the ghosts can do all kinds of things and still have moods.

Jaron stayed inspired for a while and we had two open easels at the time, so he painted two paintings. They’re very low skill and I find the social bunny very creepy, personally, so Marjorie will be selling them eventually with the next batch of paintings. I do appreciate that he’s contributing to the cause, though.

In the early morning, Marjorie wakes up and goes into labor. Some time later, after a nap and a shower, she’s finally ready to deliver the first child of generation three.

“Hmm. This isn’t so bad after all.”

“OW! Wait! I take it all back! Oh, I take it back! YOUCH!”

“Hello, little monster. Nice to meet you and all that crap. Okay, time for work. Adios, Baby Girl Gregory.”

“There, there, little one. Yeah, momma had to leave for work, but we’ll still give you a name.”

Marjorie did just have the kid, dropped her in the bassinet, and ran off to work. That cracked me up because it is so like her to do this baby thing half-heartedly.

Meet little Tessa Gregory, first child of generation 3! She’ll have a sibling since I like to have a spare, so she’s not automatically heiress from the get-go, even if Marjorie’s pregnancies are miserable for her and me. Anyway, Tessa here has Nathan’s skin tone apparently and it looks like she has Marjorie’s eyes since they’re brown. I wish I knew whether she was a redhead or had dark brown hair like her mother (or maybe even Natalie’s color – not sure if the genetics engine works with recessives), but we’ll find out eventually.

“Hey, Dorian. So, the girls are at work and it’s just you, me, and Tessa. What are we doing out here?”

“Well, everything from inside is in our family inventory, and everything that didn’t go in the inventory is out here with us, so I’d guess we’re finally getting a house upgrade.”

“About time!”

Behold: what I’ve jokingly been calling “The House that Child-Hating Built.” I tried to name it that but it was too long, so this is just Gregory Manor instead. Yawn. The money for it did come from the quest to reach Marjorie’s aspiration before she had children, so there’s a little validity to my original title.

Anyway, I went for a semi-whimsical style in blue and white with large shingles and lots of dormers. It doesn’t particularly fit with any part of the family. It was just what I felt like building. I like dormers and blue, so a lot of my houses look like this.

As you can see, there’s still a lot of room on the lot and I plan to build a pool eventually, but this house and its furnishing took the family from $85,000 down to about $20,000, so I’m leaving it here for a little while until I know what the bills on a house like this look like. Nathan’s rocket is still there, as are the wedding arch and the monkey bars. I also built a small mausoleum for the urns. SimRoxy always found the graves before and cried over them, so I hoped that putting them at the back of the lot would make them less attractive objects.

So, let’s go on the tour now!

Down here on the first floor, we have an entrance hall at top and a bathroom. On the left is an “inspiration room” and on the right is the “focus room.” There’s a middle grand hall with a piano that looked better there and wouldn’t fit in the inspiration room anyway, as well as the stairs. Bottom right is kitchen and dining and bottom left is a living room.

We had saved up quite a bit, but when I saw that Marjorie’s final level of her aspiration was to save $50,000 and earn $200,000, I knew I could blow the savings on a nice house and she’d still earn enough back for the savings long before she makes that $200,000. Plus they’ve been living so austerely, I was really looking forward to building and furnishing a better house. I didn’t decorate it much, but I plan to in the future.

Upstairs we have Marjorie’s dark grey master bedroom, a cheery children’s bedroom, a middle hall, two bathrooms, a play room, and a spare room that is occupied by Dorian and Corinne at the moment.

I also liberally placed better lighting so I could stop having to adjust all my pictures before I put them in the chapter. That was a real pain.

Now let’s look at a few of my favorite rooms.

The inspiration room is full of inspiring décor and useful objects for writing and painting masterworks, as well as our two violins. I kept a few of the nicer paintings for “nicely decorated” points, but no masterpieces since those sell for so much more money.

The focus room includes the chess table, the woodworking table, Marjorie’s programming computer, and all the focusing objects and decorations I have. I eventually added another desk for homework.

Both of these rooms are actually quite effective at putting sims in the desired mood unless they have a really, really, really strong bad moodlet. Even pregnant Marjorie becomes un-tense when she steps inside. I love these rooms, in case you couldn’t guess.

Finally we have the children’s playroom. Except for the art desk and the llamapegacorn, they’ve never really had much children’s stuff, so this was a fun room for me to decorate. I’m really looking forward to Tessa being able to use some of this stuff so I can try out the dollhouse and the science desk in particular.

“Ooh! A new door! Must knock . . .”

I swear to god, I am not two minutes out of build mode before simRoxy comes jogging up to knock on the door. Door-knocking has always been a hobby of hers, ever since that first bathroom door at the lawn house. Ah, nostalgia. We’ve come a long way since then.

“So what do you think of the house, Dorian?”“Eh, it’s okay.”“Just okay?”“Well, I’m still sharing a bedroom with my sister well into my adulthood and I predict I’ll spend most of my time in the inspiration room cranking out paintings for my other sister to sell for her aspiration, so yeah, it’s okay.”

Eesh, when he puts it like that, I feel really bad. I need to work on giving Corinne and Dorian more of a life outside of their spare roles if they’re going to stick around.

Ha ha, whatever Nathan’s trying to say to Tessa, she is having none of it. That is some major sass she’s throwing back despite being a baby. I love her already!

Everyone took turns caring for Tessa throughout the day so she was always well-fed, cleaned up, and loved. I wasn’t sure if Marjorie just hated children or if that included babies, too, but I didn’t work up the courage to experiment for a day.

Finally the experiment happens and . . . it’s a success? Marjorie does not get angry around Tessa, although she does get a tense moodlet from the décor, of all things. It said something like “stressful décor,” so I think it means the children’s furniture. Lol, Marjorie, just lol. Anyway, if she doesn’t get angry yet, this is a great time for her to spam interactions on Tessa and hope they have some relationship left over by the time Tessa’s a teen. Mother and child are soon good friends.

Everyone’s been working a lot lately, and with the introduction of vacation days comes the moodlet that makes you tense when you’ve worked too many days in a row. Because of promotions and me pushing them, these four have been working pretty constantly, so they often come home tense. That’s what’s happening to Dorian in this picture, anyway.

And this is what happens when two tense sims autonomously tell dramatic stories at the same time. For once, Marjorie isn’t the one making dinner weird.

“My dear, have I told you that motherhood flatters you?”“No, and you should probably avoid reminding me that I’m a mother, but I am swayed by your suave kiss, Nathan.”“Enough so that we should retire to our room?”“Hmm . . .”

The next morning . . .

“Dammit, Nathan.”

“So you know how we created a little monster that grew inside me until it came violently bursting out, causing me to be incredibly tense first for several days?”“Uh-huh.”“Well, we did it again. Monster 2 is a go.”

I love that they share the news now, even if it is extremely out of character for Marjorie to be enthusing over her pregnancy. It’s still cute. <3

“Ah, my sweet little Tessa! You’re going to be a big sister soon, but don’t rush the growing up part. Mommy might be . . . a little difficult after you grow up. But anyway, the good news is you’ll have a baby brother or sister to play with while Mommy’s ignoring you and/or angry. What do you think of that?”

“Gurgle! Ababababa. Pht!”

“That’s what I thought.”

This is Marjorie telling stories to herself from her insane trait while making a salad of some sort according to my notes. Not really sure what relation those three balls have to a salad, but it is the sims. Anything is possible. The storytelling/talk to self interactions are actually kind of nice because Marjorie is never low on social, and she keeps herself busy while doing other things. It’s when she starts talking to other people that we have problems.

Oh, super. Hiding the urns in a mausoleum at the back of the lot did not deter our intrepid mourner. You know, in real life, yeah, you don’t get over things right away, or ever in some cases. But this is not real life. This is a game, and this sim has a major problem with letting go. I will predict now that if we can keep her as a family friend – which is what I intend – she will be mourning Natalie for many generations to come.

Marjorie! You got up to care for Tessa in the middle of the night and you actually look kind of pleased.

“Don’t tell anyone. You’ll blow my cover.”

“There, there, little monster. I’ve decided not to leave you to be raised by wolves. I hope you’re grateful for that. You know . . . these things are kind of cute in a way. They grow on you. I guess it’s a little different when you have one of your own to love . . . Wait, did anyone hear me say that? They must never know!”

“Ahem . . . If you’re pregnant and you hate it, get real tense!If you’re pregnant and you hate it, get real tense!If you’re pregnant and you hate it, then you’ll annoy the one who plays it!If you’re pregnant and you hate it, get real tense!”

Somehow I don’t think that thoughtful shower worked the full extent of its inspirational magic on you, Marjorie.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My song is awesome.”

“Wow, sweetie. You’re getting so big! It’ll be real soon now. You’ve really been a trooper with this one.”

“Well, the mood rooms do help take my mind of things, but . . .”

“Come here, let me whisper to you. Secretly, I don’t 100% hate the products of this process, even if I’m not real fond of the process itself. They’re, like, not completely awful and the little monster we have now is, you know, okay and stuff.”

“Are you messing with me, Marjorie?”“No, I swear!”“Well then, that’s great! You’ve made some real progress on the important issue of not hating your own helpless progeny.”“I know, right? I rock! But I still reserve the right to hate them when they grow up.”“Sigh.”

Well, no wonder Marjorie hates children. Kicked in the chest and the pregnant belly at the same time? That’s just rude, Tessa. Marjorie was still building her relationship when it came time for Tessa to grow up, so I hurried her out of the room before she could get angry around Tessa.

And here’s the little monster herself! Tessa looks so much like her dad, it’s uncanny. She does not in fact have brown eyes, so I’m thinking maybe all babies have brown eyes. She has Nathan’s light skin, blue eyes, red hair, and overall facial build. I’m super excited that we got a redhead on the first try. Maybe baby #2 will be too, and I’ll be guaranteed a redheaded heir/ess.

And here she is after her makeover. Tessa’s trait is good, which is one that her granddad Jaron had as well, and her aspiration is Whiz Kid, which I haven’t had a chance to play yet. I see her as a slightly fussy, intellectual kid who loves jewelry. There! Insta-personality!

Marjorie wasn’t the only one who spent lots of time with baby Tessa. Her first action as an autonomous sim is to track down her dad, also a good friend, for a hug. Aww.

He then helps her with her homework. She hasn’t even gone to school yet, but since she’s going to be a whiz kid, it makes sense to be extra prepared.

For her aspiration, Tessa needs to be read to by an adult for a few hours, and Nathan is happy to comply. Meanwhile, where’s the mother?

Argh. Marjorie! I have canceled that action like three times already today and you snuck one past me while I was watching your husband be cute with your daughter.

“Sucks to be you!”

Feel better, dollhouse destroyer?

“Yes, actually. I got a happy moodlet from that. It was quite satisfying.”

I’m sure. You know what would be satisfying for me?

“No . . . ?”

“This is so not fair! I’m almost in my third trimester! How could you make me . . . Grr.”

Hey, grumble all you want, but you broke it.

After this, Marjorie did something else autonomously that honestly and truly shocked me . . .

She headed downstairs to “express love” to Tessa. I have to admit, I was flabbergasted. First, that’s an adorable interaction. Second, what the heck, Marjorie? Since when do you love kids?

“Since they’re my own. It’s different somehow!”

There you have it. Not only did she not get angry around Tessa like she did in the past around Dorian when he was a child, she autonomously gave her affection. She’s still tense as hell about the pregnancy and I have to cancel that dollhouse-smashing on the regular, but she genuinely doesn’t hate Tessa. I know that’s like Mothering 101, but it really surprised and pleased me.

In fact, when Tessa returned home from school the next day, Marjorie had a whim to tutor her, so she did. They then had a nice conversation afterwards. This is truly blowing my mind. I was so prepared for her to act the way she had around Dorian and his friend Olivia and I had been setting everything up to help get around that, and then it’s not even an issue? I’m kind of both relieved and a little annoyed. Mostly relieved, though.

Nathan’s adult birthday came up. Curiously, Marjorie is still several days away. I think she stops aging totally when she’s pregnant, because she’s never had a potion of youth and she started out one day older than Nathan. Weird.

Also, please note how lackluster the celebration is in this picture. Marjorie and Dorian can’t even be bothered to look in Nathan’s direction. Poor guy. Happy birthday, Nathan! Your present is that you now actually have a full partner in helping you raise your kids. I know, I’m shocked too.

Tessa now needs to play some chess games for her aspiration. Dorian has no logic skill at all, so he seems like a good opponent for a child. Dorian and Corinne both helped out occasionally with Tessa when she was a baby, so they’re friends with her too.

My goal is to have both children complete their aspirations and get A’s this generation. Shouldn’t be too hard with just two of them and four adults in the house.

Ha ha ha, now that is a labor face. Please notice Nathan, blithely sleeping through the whole thing.

“Well, hello, monster 2! I’m incredibly tired, so why don’t you and I both go to bed for a few hours and then we’ll name you.”

Marjorie.

“Fine. Fine. We already picked out a name anyway. This monster is named Aaron. Now can I go back to bed? I’m exhausted.”

Aaron also has Nathan’s skin, but we’ll have to wait to see on the hair and eyes.

“I sense a disturbance in the force, like my undisputed claim at heirship has disappeared.”

Yeah, could be you or Aaron. I’m doing the random thing, and we actually have one more thing to wait for before I roll for heir.

Nathan finally woke up the next morning, and I moved the crib to the playroom, which was a good thing because apparently having a baby makes Nathan frisky. You can probably guess what happened next . . .

“Yes! Three monsters!”

Yeah, since Marjorie doesn’t hate her own kids, I decided to go for three again. I just like seeing the variety in the genetics and two feels like too few kids for some reason.

You look awfully pleased for someone who’s already tense, Marjorie.

“Well, everyone knows you need at least three to make a good pie.”

That’s not funny.

“It’s a little funny.”

“What?! Another one?!”

Hey, Nathan! That is not how your react to joyous news!

“I mean . . . Oh boy, another one! Hip hip hurray!”“I know, right? Oh Nathan, we’ll have three little monsters to keep us busy!”“Wait . . . you’re . . . happy about that?”“Being pregnant? No. The kids? Sure. Aren’t you?”“Aww, who wouldn’t be with such a hot wife like you.”“Hey now, mister. Four is too many. Back off.”“Fine.”

The difference in his face in these two pics is cracking me up.

“Aww, Abilene the teddy bear, you’ll never try to steal my heirship. I love you so much!”

That’s not trouble brewing at all, folks, but that is where we’re going to leave the end of the chapter. Check back next time to see Aaron grow up and meet monster baby #3.

Check in with me at SiMania or Boolprop! Thanks for reading!http://z12.invisionfree.com/sim_maniahttp://boolprop.net.