One Million Nooboos: Moving

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.