I came home one night after a hard day putting out fires.

And this was what was waiting for me.

“Allison!” Hetal came running down the stairs. “Where are we going for my birthday?”

I just stopped and stared.

Hetal’s eyes narrowed. “You DID remember my birthday, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Of course I did,” I lied. “You have the best birthday present ever waiting for you.”

Hetal clapped her hands greedily. “What?”

“A new house!”

“You have to be kidding me.”

That wasn’t the kind of response I was expecting, but it was too late now.

I got the family together, and we said goodbye to our cramped little duplex. I was so glad to be getting out of this place.

I sent Hetal ahead with the kids, and I walked the kitties to their new home.

Kitties have a rough time with change. They just need a little bit of extra loving care at a time like this, you know?

Our new house was waiting for us.

Sure, it looked a little bit creepy, but it was nighttime. I would look a whole lot better in the morning.

While I was still walking to the new house, Hetal had her birthday.

Her mom was there to greet her to middle age, but I missed it. She was never going to let me live that down, new house or no new house.

The kids explored the new yard while they waited for me. Such a lot of space to run and play!

When I showed up, I brought a cake with me from the store so that we could at least have a little something to celebrate Hetal’s age up.

Hetal wasn’t terribly grateful. “I am not sitting here” she exclaimed. “This chair has something growing on it!”

“Then don’t,” I said.

So we all sat in the living room.

Hetal said that living in a dump like this was going to turn her to a life of crime.

“I’m going to fix it up,” I said. “It’s going to look amazing. You’ll see.”

Jin and Caitlyn knew better than to say anything, so they just ate their cake.

Branden, meanwhile, got really attached to Raspberry.

And we seemed to have mislaid Deanne.

Christof appreciated the dining table at least. He’s not scared off by a little bit of scuzz.

“I can’t believe I’m sleeping in this,” Hetal whimpered as we curled up together in the damp, creaky bed.

“We’ll be living in the lap of luxury,” I said. “You’ll see.

Jin and Deanne slept on the upstairs landing with a lot of old clutter.

And the kids got bunk beds! See! Just as good as at the old house.

And everything looked better the next morning.

Hetal and Jin went to explore the shed at the back of the property. They almost needed a machete to get there.

I headed to City Hall to receive another award for capturing gnomes, but something went very wrong.

Fortunately, when I got home, Hetal found my new look a real turn-on.

Not that I’m complaining.

At least the kitties liked the new place.

Caitlyn and Christof got used to it and played hide and seek in the waist-high brambles.

I put Deanne’s potty out in the dirt-floor garage.

At least it kept the stink away from the house.

And then it was Branden’s birthday!

We all cheered while he transformed….

…. into some kind of horrible, distorted monster.

Then the kids all climbed up through the floor.

To sleep in the air over my bedroom.

Even the monster-that-was-Branden.

And then I woke up.

“Allison? Allison? Are you ok?” Hetal was shaking me awake.

“Uh, what?” I mumbled.

“You were crying out in your sleep. Are you ok?”

I blinked. I was in our shabby, but comfortable, bed in our cramped but comfortable duplex. It had never looked so wonderful. “I think I just had a nightmare,” I said.

Hetal pulled me close. “Oh, baby!” she said. “Let me scare the monsters away,”

Whew.

Now that I had a chance to do this over, I was NOT going to forget her birthday.

———-

So here’s a little bit of retcon from the lot and the playtime I lost. Plus all the messed-up glitch shots I was able to take. I didn’t bother to track fails. Branden peed himself once, and that’s the only one I’m sure of.

Allison used a LLAMA to go to City Hall to collect an award, and she got the fail that turned her into a tragic clown for a day. It was pretty funny. She stumbled around everywhere, but I couldn’t catch it in a screenshot.

And it occurs to me that I never went back to get that award since I restored from save. The opportunity has been sitting at City Hall for about a sim-week. I need to go do that.

Spring was just starting to slink into Moonlight Falls, but there was still frost on the ground.

Some lady showed up with an umbrella on a cloudless day to hang out in our yard.

Apparently her idea of fun was cleaning up our old newspapers.

Don’t ask me. I didn’t hire her.

I, on the other hand, was up at the crack of dawn. The city wanted to throw some kind of ceremony to recognize my awesome heroism, but the only time I figured I could get away was when people were asleep.

Oh, I guess that lady with the umbrella knew what she was doing because now it was pour rain. I guess that’s Spring for you. I should have put on a raincoat.

I dashed into a nearby phone booth to get out of the rain.

And something very strange happened….

And I got out right across the street from city hall!

Phone booths — the only way to travel!

A bunch of people came to see me get a new award. At least, I’m sure they must have been here to see me.

This hot fellow is William’s older brother Anton Pierce. Mmmmm. Hot does seem to run in the family.

A young politician named Miyuki Mai presented me with my award. I guess they couldn’t book the actual mayor.

I guess umbrellas are another way to travel. I’ll have to try that out.

And after all that, all I got was a trophy!

I appreciate the thought and all, but folks? If you want to show me how much you appreciate my work for our fair city, do it with a really fat check. We’re sitting on cat-scratched folding chairs in an empty living room, but now I have a statuette.

While I was gone, Jin tried to cook again.

Sigh.

But at least her love life was looking promising again.

On the way home, I decided to spend the money I didn’t get as an award to pick up some birthday cakes. We got so busy we missed the last ones, and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

Christof was first because Caitlin was sleeping.

Suddenly, Jin realized that she’d forgotten something.

It was the hot dogs she’d been cooking when the birthday party started. Whoops.

This could have been a serious problem in another house, but Allison Wonderland lives here. I knew just what to do. First, I set Christof down where he’d be safe.

And while I was doing that Hetal put out the fire.

By the time I got outside, the only thing left to do was clean up the soot.

I’m ok with this. I swear. I am a mature woman who does not feel threatened when her wife steals her thunder without even asking.

Hetal seemed pretty ticked off at her mom for starting that fire. I hope they’re going to be OK.

While we were out, Christof grew up.

And went to get the first slice of cake.

And where was Branden, anyway?

He never seems to come home from school anymore. Doesn’t he like us?

Next it was Caitlin’s turn. She was fresh up from her nap, so the timing was perfect. Caitlin’s such a sweet little girl. I’m sorry she’s going to be getting too big for me to hold her in my arms. I’m glad that she’s going to be too big to scream her head off all the time, though.

She didn’t think we needed a cake just for her, though, and decided to age up when she got downstairs.

All right, then. We had one more chance to get this whole birthday cake celebration right. This time I was going to make it happen no matter what!

I did have a bit of trouble getting Deanne out of her crib.

But she was all right.

The whole family — except Branden — gathered around to welcome our last (and I mean LAST) baby into toddlerhood.

Raspberry was just sinking into the rug with excitement.

My sweet little green girl!

Jin was ready to get to work.

I dashed over to give Deanne her first toddler tickle!

But Hetal discovered that her ice spell was more exhausting than she’d expected. This wouldn’t have happened if she’d just let me do my job, now would it? But of course I’m not bitter or anything.

While we were all finishing up the party, Branden showed up.

“Where have you been?” I exclaimed.

“I was just out,” he said, and he immediately headed up to bed.

I just don’t know about that boy.

Right after that, Caitlin turned red and dashed to the shower.

We had to rearrange things a bit for bedtime. We figured the best place for Deanne was in the garage with Jin. I mean, Hetal and I are the breadwinners, or Hetal will be too if she ever goes back to work. We really can’t deal with a kid waking us up at night.

But it worked out all right the first night. I mean, really really all right.

How’s that for getting it right?

———-

Fires in Home: 0 + 1
Passing out: 9 + 1 = 10
Self-peeing: 4 + 1 = 5
Minor Cheats: 1 + 1 = 2
Pet Social Worker Visits: 0 + 1 = 1

I think there should be bonus points awarded for getting 7 sims and 5/6 cats all to go to bed on time. Just saying’. I think I am going to record that under “Beautiful Moments.”

Beautiful Moments: 0 + 1 = 1

Now that I’m over the whole control freak thing, I am having a BLAST with this ISBI. People are always failing, but something funny is ALWAYS happening. I’m enjoying collecting all of the obscure fails.

Deanne is ADORABLE. She got of her her hair, skin, and eyes from Jin. However, I’m pretty sure she’s adorable because she’s a face clone of Allison. ARRRRRGH! She is Clumsy and Angler. Since I used MC to replace the baby, I didn’t get to pick traits.

Christof is an Athletic, Friendly Vegetarian I think. I tried to skill him up so I could choose his child trait, but I had a sort-of glitch at the end and didn’t finish his potty training. (It was really bad UI — it turns out that you can’t select potty training as an action if the kid is in the crib, and I thought that having no action meant his potty training was done.) I used a Change of Personality elixer on him, thinking I’d get to pick the changed trait, but no. That was Vegetarian. Christof is running the very real risk of making it to YA without being Insane.

Caitlin is a Good, Insane Cat Person. How appropriate!

I think those “phone booths” are LAAMAs? Or whatever the acronym is? I recall that Twallan said something about making them routing objects at some point. That’s the way Allison decided to go to City Hall to collect her award. You can’t see it very well, but it’s on their bed stand in the last shot.

However, I’m going to take credit for another minor cheat. I think it actually happened in the last chapter, but the social worker came for the cats because one of them was lonely, and I reloaded the game. I was NOT going to lose those cats, and besides that I’m not really planning on including them in anything point-related despite putting them on the scorecard.

The cats were always in the red or orange for social need. I wasn’t sure what to do. As an experiment, I used Twallan’s Retuner to remove React Negatively and React Neutrally from the pet autonomous action list. As far as I can tell, this action is for yowling at food that is left out, and since this is an ISBI, there’s ALWAYS food left out in various stages of decay. That action doesn’t fill any needs, but it seems to be something a pet will do instead of anything useful. Once I got rid of those actions, the cats started actually seeing to their own needs, and I haven’t had a problem since.

And I am caught up again!

Caitlin and Deanne were sleeping, but Christof was having none of it, so I ended up leaving him in his new walker while Hetal and I got some sleep.

The next morning, Jin got a call from Ayden. He told her he got married, but he hoped that wouldn’t hurt their relationship.

She told him to take his money and shove it, and then hung up. Jin is an amazing woman. Sure, she’s a hideous old maid trapped into providing free child care, but she has principles!

Jin tried to pretend she wasn’t bothered and went to cook some dinner.

But you could tell it was on her mind.

Then again, she might just be a really bad cook.

This was not my and Hetal’s best moment, but we were desperate!

Sometimes Hetal is the only part of life that keeps me going.

Afterward, I finally got to take some time with Dinah. It’s been so long since I got to play with my sweet kitties.

And Jin ate her own cooking, since nobody else would. And Cheshire scratched up our good folding chair.

OK, this place was a pit, and we only had burned hot dogs to eat. It was time for me to step up and whip us into shape. First I cooked some dinner.

It was pancakes, which is all I know how to make. Everyone will eat it and like it.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad if I do say so myself.

Then I cleaned up the cat puke that had been sitting in the floor for a week.

Then I told Branden to GO TO BED. And to my shock, he did!

Meanwhile, Ayden called Jin again. She told him to shove off.

And then she passed out. This thing with her man really has her off her game.

But Branden got a decent amount of sleep and did 11% of his homework in the morning before dashing off to meet the bus on time. I will have to remember to tell him to go to bed more often.

We didn’t get much sleep, and I had to dash off to work. Hetal stepped up to take care of the kids.

She’s come such a long way from the independent woman who wasn’t sure she wanted to have children. Now she’s a great mom, and she’s about to be fired from her job! What a turnaround.

She even managed to actually read Branden that bedtime story he’s been begging for.

Jin just wouldn’t let go of the hot dog thing until she produced some we could eat.

Kitties! (I don’t have a segue, but who needs one of those anyway?)

Cheshire and Strawberry.

Peanut, Cheshire, Raspberry, and Plum.

Dinah and Raspberry.

I have such a wonderful kitty family.

Actually, I’m posting all that sweetness to distract myself by how lousy the evening was.

OK, look, I worked all day with no break, and the kids wouldn’t let me sleep, OK??

And then there was a golden moment.

Everyone was sleeping so peacefully AT THE SAME TIME.

Well, 6 out of 7 ain’t bad.

———-

Passing out: 5 + 4 = 9.

Oh the fail, it makes you want to cry. But then there’s a baby and two toddlers. It’s pretty much what I expected.

That woohoo while Christof was in the room was totally autonomous, I swear!

While Branden was wandering around, refusing to sleep without a bedtime story, I noticed that Allison had a “Go to sleep” interaction with him. She used it, and he went to sleep! But I haven’t seen it since. I’m not sure what makes it show up.

Also, you should probably get an extra point deduction when the torch holder fails. :-p It’s pretty much what she said. She was moving from baby/toddler crisis to baby/toddler crisis that the idiots weren’t dealing with, and every time she tried to go to bed, a crying kid would wake her up. She actually went to work, and I think she even got promoted, but she couldn’t sleep THERE because there was an emergency and the fire truck was about to break down. I should’ve just left her at the fire house to get a little bit of sleep before throwing her back into the lion’s den.

Poor Allison. It will get better.

On the bright side, Hetal has a Faithful reputation, which is pretty amazing considering her LTW is Master Romancer. Allison must be doing something right.

Come ON, kids. Can’t you just get out of the way?

The background music in our house is the sound of screaming toddlers. Jin gets the worst of it, and one night it drove her outside to get some peace and quiet.

She got more than she bargained for.

But she didn’t miss much.

When she got back, they were still screaming.

But I guess you couldn’t blame her for passing out that time.

Hetal and I kinda didn’t notice she was gone. I have to say that Hetal is one hot pregnant lady.

Though we were both too exhausted to really do anything about it, so we went to bed.

We woke up to this strange noise. It was someone rustling through our stuff.

And she took our rocking chair!!

Hetal almost lost her mind. Not the rocking chair! She was going to have a baby, and now there wouldn’t be a rocking chair! The world was ending!

She was a little bit hormonal.

While I was frantically calling the police about the intruder, she went into another room and zapped up the towel by the sink. What will we do without a way to dry our hands? We’ll have wet hands, that’s what! Oh, the humanity!

And then it turned out she had a legal right to be there. It turns out we didn’t pay our bills. Whoops.

The next day, Ayden called Jin up for another date.

It was good for her to get out of the house, even if Ayden is kind of boring.

She found a great way to have fun.

Then she told Ayden she had to go home early because she was exhausted.

And she made it all the way to her own bed and slept there! Without passing out! Jin is just made of steel.

The house was filled with kitties. Which is a wonderful thing, but it was a lot of little mouths to feed.

Don’t think that’s complaining, though, because it is totally not. Complaining. I mean, how can you complain about this?

Or this??

And then sweet Peanut had a birthday!

Isn’t he magnificent?

Branden left for his first day of school! Well, really his second day, but it was the first day he actually showed up.

He’s such a responsible little man.

I had the day off, so I tried to focus on one of the least fun parts of being a mom. I swear, I did everything I could to get Christof to do something on that potty.

But nothing! It’s enough to make you crazy!

Finally, I got the twins someplace where they could have some fun in a way that would *not involve us*.

And they did have a good time. Faces like this are why I don’t just run off and join the circus.

Look at them play together! They’re both going to be geniuses. I’m sure of it.

Hetal and I had other plans.

The last couple of times we’d tried to woohoo, something had come up. But this time for sure. The toddlers were playing in their room. Branden was at school. Jin was asleep. What could go wrong?

But when we got to the top of the stairs, Hetal stopped. “Wait,” she said. “I think can feel the baby!”

“Right, right,” I said. “I’m sure you can feel the baby. Can we get to the bedroom?”

“No,” she said. “I mean I can feel the baby coming! Right now!”

I guess this means no woohoo for a while.

I figured now was a pretty good time to celebrate my birthday. I mean, I wasn’t going to get my birthday present, but at least I’d get another kid out of it, right?

Branden came upstairs to watch.

All this parenting stress and no woohoo is really bad for your hair.

Well gathered in the hallway to gawp at Hetal giving birth. It looked really painful. Wow, I’m glad it wasn’t me.

But it took too long, so we all got tired and went to bed.

But at last our fourth (and FINAL!) child was born.

Wait, don’t pay attention to that. You might have *thought* you saw a pale-skinned boy, but you really saw a teal-skinned girl.

This is Deanne.

Hetal laid her in her crib.

The twins were so busy playing peekaboo, they didn’t even notice.

Hetal relaxed after the stresses of childbirth with Dinah. I approve.

So you’re the new baby, huh?

Wow, you’re so sweet.

Anyone who tells this beautiful little girl what I said about her before she was born will see their house burn down. Think I’m bluffing? Don’t try me.

———-

Pregnancies: 2 + 1 = 3
Total Babies: 3 + 1 = 4

Passing out: 4 + 1 = 5
Repo visits: 0 + 1 = 1

Cheats: 0 + 1 = 1

So, my first ever repo visit!

The backstory here is that the mailbox glitched out. This lot had one of the Late Night high-rise mailboxes out front in its own little shelter. I’ve lived in places that did it that way, and I liked it. But I think around the time of the University patch, it stopped working. I’m not entirely sure. I tried all sorts of things — resetting it, moving it around, etc. The news of the bills came up, and even though Allison couldn’t get the bill from the mailbox, the late bill warning dropped it into her inventory for me. So I instructed her to pay it by clicking the bill in her inventory. It dropped out of her queue, and I did it again. And I then I thought it succeeded and all was well.

So I spent the last of their savings on those two strollers to go to the park. And that morning the repo-lady showed up.

Also, I cheated. The first kid born was a boy with Allison’s skin tone and Hetal’s hair and eyes AGAIN. After much grumbling, I used MasterController to create a new baby. This is not a particularly game-changing cheat, and I’m not sure I’m willing to take a point hit for it. (Because this is totally about the points, right? I haven’t even decided how/if I’m going to score the scoresheet.) But I’m going to record them.

Hetal tried about four times to woohoo with Allison, and they couldn’t make it to their bed. With that and the mailbox thing, plus a whole sequence from the pic at the beginning where Hetal and Christof got into a face off at the head of the stairs and neither of them could route anywhere until I reset Hetal, had me ready to dump the condo and move. But I discovered that the door was “in use” by Branden, despite the fact that Branden was in bed downstairs. I had to delete and replace the door to fix that, and while I was at it, I enlarged the landing a bit at the expense of Hetal and Allison’s bedroom. That, and deleting the mailbox and letting the game replace it with a standard one, and the lot is functioning again.

I’ve become kind of stupidly attached to this condo. But also, the Wonderlands have been living hand-to-mouth, and I’m not sure they can afford one much better.