One Million Nooboos

Are you ready for this (m'lady) ?!

Welcome back, everyone, to another installment of One Million Nooboos. This encompasses a small amount of game time, but there's a whopper of a change to share.

What? I'm always changing something? You're right. I am. You have no idea the number of revisions the rules of the original Who's Your Daddy underwent. This is kind of the same thing, sorting out the things that don't work and trying new ones.

Back to the challenge. At home right now we have:

Melinda, the mom
Monkey, the dog
Mia, the cat
Malachai, son of the mixologist
Micah, son of the pizza delivery man
Matthew, son of the maid
Mojo, imaginary friend-turned-real of Malachai

I'd never before allowed an imaginary friend to become real. The results are rather funny. As predicted, Mojo is much easier to live with as a real sim than he was as an IF.

I'm a horsey!

No, you're riding a horsey. A horse.

The utter delight imaginary friends take in ordinary things when they first become real is hysterical. He got a moodlet for this.

Pillow of sand! How wonderful! I'll sleep right here!

He got a moodlet for this, too.

*snore* Pillow of sand . . . *snore*

He got a really big moodlet for this.

"The trash needs to be taken out, Mojo." "Oh, boy, gravity, wheeeee!"

Malachai hasn't adjusted to Mojo's reality quite yet, but he's learning. When Mojo became real, it's like he flipped a switch in regards to the playground. Malachai seldom used it, but Mojo is all over it and now his brother follows suit.

Perhaps Malachai was just a fussy kid.

Maybe just a little fussy.

Surprise, surprise, I've adjusted my age settings again. Someone on Carl's forum asked about realistic age settings and that got me thinking. I love the length of the epic lifespan, but the spread of ages isn't accurate at all, so I did what I'd wanted to do for a long time and sat down to calculate more realistic settings. They aren't perfect, but I'm liking them so far.

Human

infant - 12 days
toddler - 24 days
child - 123 days
teen - 61 days
young adult - 98 days
adult - 420 days
elder - 226 days

Dog

puppy - 4 days
adult - 98 days
elder - 61 days

Cat

kitten - 3 days
adult - 120 days
elder - 62 days

Horse

foal - 9 days
adult - 299 days
elder - 62 days

Boring list? Check. Won't do that again, promise.

The change in settings brought about a few very quick changes.

Quite dashing, but not the looked I'd imagined.

Micah had his birthday almost immediately. Nobody cared, I didn't bother with a cake. I keep meaning to throw birthdays during the day so the fewest number of family members are involved as possible (because the kids are at school,) but I can seldom be bothered even with that.

Micah rolls as his third trait Never Nude, so he's eccentric, friendly and wants to keep his clothes on. This reminded me of a certain celebrity, but we'll get to Micah's makeover in a moment.

I've never seen kids so excited about their beloved pet inching closer to death.

Monkey's birthday came next. No one came to watch Micah spin up, but Monkey garnered a crowd.

If I can't make them love me, maybe holding the dog will help.

Monkey's appearance changed very little. His black mask has gone gray, that's pretty much it. Micah's favorite color is pink, so I opted for some more feminine colors, and in keeping with his new Never Nude trait, he gets little gloves to wear.

No offense to Michael Jackson intended at all, but he was definitely my inspiration when picking outfits for Micah. He was also friendly, eccentric and never nude.

The new girl in town.

With Mojo made real and Micah now grown to a child, I felt safe letting his imaginary friend out of his inventory to play. Meet Murple. She is significantly less annoying than Mojo was as an IF. In fact, she flies so low below the radar that I often lose track of her. Imaginary friends move so slowly that Micah often moves back and forth across the lot while Murple is still tracking on his first location. It keeps her out of trouble, at any rate.

Peas in a very bright pod.

I swear I didn't dress them alike intentionally. The gloves just kill me! I totally made the right call.

I love Murple, she's so much better than your teddy. Why haven't you got a real imaginary friend, Mal?


I do. He's that weird one over there transfixed by his waffles. Quite real, I'd say.

I'd say.

Kersplat?

Don't worry, reality is in the cards for Murple, too, just not quite yet.

Sleep tight, kids, tomorrow's a big day.

It's moving day! The house the Motts have lived in, as you know, I built for them from an empty lot as I went along. I had a general design in mind, though practical considerations left it resembling only slightly the image I'd had in my mind. As the family has grown, a number of additional considerations have arisen:

The house is two floors. The children's bedroom is on the second floor. This makes it very difficult to ensure they all get to bed when I'm also trying to keep an eye on Melinda, the babies and the pets on the first floor.
The lot is very large, and it's full. This, along with lots of aesthetic decorations, is the cause of some of the lag I've experienced, I believe.
Being so large, it also takes quite a long time for either me with the camera or the sims themselves to travel from one side to the other.

The Motts need a house that's only one story, on a smaller lot with fewer decorations. I asked in the building requests thread, but no one took up my request. (Sad face!)

The new Maison Mott.

Surprisingly, I built this for them in one sitting. I don't usually like to build that way, but with the understanding that the house need not look perfect and that decorating should be kept to a minimum, it turned out not to be so bad.

The house is one story, except for a small loft area with some more advanced skilling equipment. It has a large bedroom that sleeps ten, 16 if you do bunk beds all around. (I don't intend to have that many home at once, but you never know.) Melinda has a small bedroom and private bath. The nursery has two cribs but could easily fit five. The bathroom has two showers and one shower/tub, plus three toilets. The kitchen is separate.

I got the idea from the trailers in Riverview. I took the dimensions of one and created four rooms that size, corner to corner. The center of those rooms is the great room with all the random assortment of stuff to occupy sims on free will, plus a dining area. One of the "trailers" became the kitchen/bathroom, one the kids' bedroom, one Melinda's room/bath/nursery and the fourth I opened up to allow for more space around the entries.

This home's best feature: space.

I won't bore you with more pictures than this one. I love this open space. It minimizes traffic jams and allows space for social interactions without clogging up the high traffic areas around the objects and doorways.

The kids are really making the most out of the new house.

Dirt is fun!

Speed is not fun! (I disagree.)

Cooperation is fun!

Loneliness is not fun.

Standing on the furniture waiting to do your brothers' dishes is fun!

Poorly lit pictures are not fun!

Seriously, I'm liking the new house, too. For me, any big change, the addition of a spouse, a first child or a move, can be a deal-breaker. It's an opportune time for me to lose interest in a family. It's also an opportune time for really big screwy glitches, but there have been few.

The school bus problem remains. Rarely does it bring the boys home. If it does, it's usually just Mojo. I have to be sure to tell all the kids to come home after school. None of them attend their after school activities. The lack of extracurriculars doesn't bother me, but I was hoping the move would solve the bus issue.

Kitteh causes a problem.

After the Motts moved in, I found a few questionable choices regarding furniture placement and fixed them, but Mia created a new one. This is her favorite sleeping spot, on a single tile between a wall and a bed. Her being there blocks the sims from the bed, or, worse, blocks a sim in the bed from doing anything else. Setting a pet's favored sleeping place hasn't made a difference in either pet's sleeping choices, so I guess we'll have to live with this small annoyance.

I'm really happy with the pictures of the kids above, though, because they're finally taking advantage of the activities at their disposal throughout the house and yard. So I'm 98% satisfied with the decision to move.

What's that? A baby? There should be a baby?

It's BABY TIME!

The winner of the next babydaddy contest : former babysitter Lorenzo Rutledge.

Lorenzo was actually #2 on the list after our very handsome maid, Randall Rider. (Both Randall and the current sitter, Lindsey, followed the Motts to their new house.) As I was planning the move, I realized that all the boys had different fathers, of course, but that those men also had different roles in the community. That was a Who's Your Daddy must-have, and I thought it would be fun to attempt as many different kinds of fathers as I could manage. Since Seymore (Matthew's father) was also a maid, Randall got blacklisted.

So, anyway, invite over, courtship, woohoo, etc.

Fuss & bother!

Melinda's labor with her fourth child started like this. Everyone ran over and Mojo was screaming bloody murder. Seriously, it sounded like someone lit him on fire, not like he was watching the miracle of birth. This is one first he does not think is so wonderful.

They've seen it before.

But this is how the labor and birth wound up. Halfway through, Mojo went to take a bath, Malachai went outside to play and Micah returned to his mac & cheese.

Cuter than average.

I know all sim infants look the same, so is it just me, or is this one cuter than usual? No squinty eyes or droopy expressions. It's my pleasure to introduce to you Moses Lorenzo Mott. Moe's random traits are Virtuoso and Neurotic, giving us two neurotic kids. He and Malachai can freak out together when Moses gets bigger.

Thanks for reading! Picspam below, and I hope you'll join us next time for another installment of One Million Nooboos.

Matt didn't feature a lot in this chapter, so I thought I'd throw a few shots in here so you know we didn't leave him behind at the old house.

They say toddlers put a lot of things in their mouths.

I dunno.


I mean, I put stuff in my mouth, too. No big deal.

Gearing up to move.

Melinda, Matthew and Micah shared the backseat.


Mia called shotgun.

So I guess Monkey, Malachai and Mojo are in the trunk?

Lindsey has been practicing her Elvis lip curl.

As long as she's not actively trying to care for any children!

Lady, seriously, if you're going to make an ugly face, don't bother.

No one ever said kissing the dog was mandatory.

Bye, y'all!

Oh, why hello. Excuse the blocks. A hobby of mine. I shall be your host this evening.

Welcome back to another installment of One Million Nooboos. This one will likely be a little long, but the next couple will likely be short to make up for it.

We last left Melinda after the birth of her third child, Matthew, the son of her former maid, Seymore Cole. Also living at home are Melinda's other two sons, Malachai and Micah (pictured above), as well as the Monkey the dog and Mia the cat.

I'm glad other kids don't visit often. She looks really unhappy.

In my Sims 2 Who's Your Daddy? Challenge, anyone who ever came home with the kids from school was allowed to stay as long as they'd like. I never kicked anyone out.

In Sims 3, I can't be quite so welcoming. The paparazzi are never welcome. The stray pets are seldom welcome. Yet when Malachai brought home Starla Fox I let her stay, mostly because I'm accustomed to being asked permission. Though no request was forthcoming, she showed up and I didn't argue with Malachai about it. (I was afraid to argue with Starla; she's mean!) She definitely wasn't keen on going to a friend's house to do homework.

Mum, how many men will it take you to have one hundred kids?

I got Melinda to give her son a hand instead.

Duh . . . I hadn't really given that much thought. Is this really your math lesson?

True that. Malachai is thinking way too far ahead.

Me knows the answer?

Welcome back, Mojo. I felt bad for him, locked away in Malachai's inventory all the time, so I let him out on the weekends. He's just as annoying as ever.

So what's the answer, Mojo?

Pillowfight!

If you weren't getting beaten up, I'd be sorely tempted to do it myself.

I've actually discovered the positive side of imaginary friends and have been putting Mojo through his paces as much as possible.

A little trash . . .

A puddle or two . . .

Um, no comment.

All those chores free Malachai up to have a little fun.

Seriously, though, Mojo is more dedicated than either of our current maids.

I got my sad, droopy doggy eyes on you, puppet.

No one is supposed to see Mojo, but I'm not convinced. I think they're just ignoring him because he's so annoying.

Me is a watchin' you, bunnybear!

Mojo himself takes notice of newcomers.

At least it's not an imaginary friend.

Bunnybear is here because Matthew does not, thank heavens, have an imaginary friend, so he needs a bedtime companion.

(We skipped Matthew's birthday. It happened. It was another infant choking on Mom's sweater as she blew out a candle. Now it's just like you were there.)

Because Matthew has no IF, he also spends his time playing with toys, something his brothers have done only very rarely.

I see you!

Matthew spends just a little bit too much time in that toy chest, though. Literally, all day.

Isn't that fun, sweetie? Vroom vroom goes the rocket!

Matthew finally puts the outdoor toys to frequent use, too.

Vroom vroom, suckers!

Things have been far more difficult than I thought they should be at this point. With Micah and Matthew potty trained, Melinda need only put them in and take them out of their cribs. Either she or Malachai can feed them. She, Malachai or Mojo can empty potties.

Yet there was a surprising amount of this.

And this.

Even Randall Rider was complaining!

Things are not as they seem.

Okay, so Randall was bothered by Matt and cornered by Monkey, but you get the picture. Despite having a routine, despite mine and Melinda's best efforts to keep the younger boys on a schedule, they weren't having it.

I think the family has gotten a little glitchy. That's why things take so long. It's not terrible and I don't even think it's permanent. Malachai suffers the worst, really. He has to take the bus to school; riding his bike will causes problems. He hasn't been to scouts in ages, no idea why. And I have to tell him to come home most days.

Or else this happens.

You think your family thinks you're weird for having an imaginary friend, kid? What do you think the others kids will say when they see you hugging an imaginary doll on the playground? No, they don't have them, too. Active families only.

Yeah, you're one of the "lucky" ones. Whatever you say.

(I believe these same minor malfunctions are the reason Randall Rider's not cleaning up so well these days. It's not a deal breaker so far, so westward ho!)

Synchronized potty, coming soon to an Olympics near you.

I finally did work something out with Micah and Matthew. I go through phases of trying to cram too much into a sim day. If I step back and forget some of the wishes and a few of the chores, everyone is happier.

Nooboos on parade.

I also discovered that sending the boys out into the main room to be fed helps a ton with the flow of traffic. Melinda or Malachai feeds them on the floor, then they walk back into the nursery to potty before bed.

This house is pretty, but I'm waiting for someone in the Building Requests thread to pick mine and build a new one. The two stories of this house are too much; I need just one. I also need larger, less cluttered rooms built with traffic flow and kids in mind and less with aesthetics.

I'm only good at aesthetics.

What's that you say? Where's the baby?

I have a secret for you.

PILLOWFIGHT!

Just kidding. There is no baby for this installment. I made a decision . . .

Peer pressure.

"Hey, Mojo, you wanna be cool? You wanna be real?"

Just say no, Mojo.

"I got this for you. It's called potion. I took 4,500 simoleons from Mom's purse. It's good stuff! All the real kids are doing it."

This took about an hour. Very boring, but very sparkly.

"Whoa, Mojo, that does a whole lot more for you than it does for me."

And he's real, ladies & gentlemen!

Mojo is kid #4. I don't know if this really counts, but hey, I'm pretty sure I can make up any rules I want. Also, the kids are already going to have to come up in bunches, so I figured I shouldn't turn down a ready made kid.

But just so you know, Melinda and Monkey have been slaving away, trying to get Malachai a rainbow gem. We had eight, but I sold them. Then I decided to make the IFs real. It took a very long time, but Monkey finally came through with a gem.

Mia sees right through this guy.

Mojo's traits are Workaholic, Party Animal and Angler.

I would totally have guessed Whiny, Demanding and Selfish (or Neurotic, Mean-spirited and Neat.)

The good news is that he'll probably be much more tolerable as a real boy than he was as an IF.

So that's it for now. Micah is just nine days from a birthday, which would both free up a crib for another baby and make his IF available to make real. Which will it be? You'll have to read and find out. (Probably both.) Outtakes below. Thanks for reading!