Working on the house!

 If updates stall for a little while, it's because I'm working on the house. It's a laborious process. I would love to show a sneak peek, but I think it'll be better if I save it all for one grand reveal...! 😁

Week Three

A growing baby bump:

Rainbow playing with her chicks, in her pajamas, while the ground is frozen. During her pregnancy, she must have run very hot, because she took to wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather.

Ralston became an elder. It makes me so sad, the way elder dogs lay down to eat their food.

In her old age, Ralston finally got a playmate: Rainbow adopted Ted, who is a giant Schnauzer.

They just checked one another out, at first, but were fast friends.

Holiday lights went up just in time for the first snow:

The house is starting to feel a little bit small, with two dogs and two Sims. Here's Rainbow, on her way to the garden, undeterred by the weather.

Tending her Glow Orbs.

Their numbers are slowly increasing. It was around this time that Rainbow reached level ten of gardening. She's still around level five of the career, but once she has steady harvests of Glow Orbs, she will reach the top in no time.

Rainbow and Ben had been going through baby names, but nothing stuck. Until, on a whim, Rainbow cracked open a book on space rocks.

Hexahedrite... hmm... Howardite... no. Winonaite... Winonaite... Ben! What do you think of that?

She went into labor at the day spa...

I had her queued to go to the hospital, but then, on second thought, cancelled it and sent her home in a taxi. I don't usually do home births, but it felt very "Rainbow."

Winonaite Stone was born, Good and a Genius.

I recently learned—did you know, if a Sim has a baby at home, the mother will start off as friends with the infant? Versus, with a hospital birth, the two will only be acquaintances. Such a great, small detail, and part of why I love this game—that there are still new little things to notice after over a decade.

Ben, unfortunately, missed out on the birth of his child (and the moodlet, which was strange! I've never had that happen before). He was at the library, and so close to maxing Science that I just didn't think it was worth it to send him all the way home. He become acquainted with her later.

Winter is the perfect season to be cozied up with a baby. With that said—the house was beginning to feel very, very small. I added a nursery to give the family some breathing room.

Rainbow aged up to adult at the easel. 

Soon, it was time for Winonaite's birthday. Rainbow donned a very elegant gown for the occasion. I have no idea where it came from, and never assigned it to her as an outfit.

One last baby snuggle.

The first one, this dynasty, to get a proper cake.

Winona got put into more appropriate attire for the weather, and the family went to the Winter Festival. This was a terrible idea on my part. I don't know if this save has ever lagged as badly. It was laggy all winter, which is maybe why this week felt so slow-paced—the snow really does my laptop in. I'm really beginning to regret leaving it on.

Winonaite is a beautiful child. I think the black hair is a genetic glitch, because no one in her family tree has it, but I'm going to pretend she inherited it from her Auntie Pink.

She's quite adorable, in her star-patterned jammies.

As the week's last development, Ben began furiously cloning Tiberium. I had him do twenty-two copies.

You can't tell very well from the next picture, but on the upper floor of Rainbow's greenhouse, there's now a "Tiberium garden," where the spires are sitting until they grow.

Once they're all sold, the Stones should have about a million Simoleans—a housing expansion is definitely in the family's future!

Week Two

Fall came, and the garden turned beautiful colors.

Ben aged up to Adult alone, at the sculpting station, in the middle of the night. He didn't even get to pose for a nice screenshot. There's not much time for fanfare at the beginning of a dynasty.

I lied about Ben and Rainbow being ready for their first baby. With under a week until Rainbow's own Adult birthday, and about a dozen more ice sculptures that Ben needed to complete, I got shy and held off. I wasn't sure how close we were going to cut it, and didn't want the complicating factor of an infant during what might be a mad rush to complete museum pieces. Ben stayed parked at the sculpting station instead, continuing to marinate in his Stir Crazy moodlet.

He was already exclusively using the Super Sleeper, but with the points from all his sculpting wishes, he became a Meditative Trance Sleeper to shave off even more time. With that combination, he only needed to sleep 2–3 hours a night.

Rainbow got some cute new outfits for the colder weather, and a greenhouse.

She is at about level seven in her gardening skill. I haven’t been focusing on it, probably because I've been so focused on getting Ben skilled up for her museum pieces. Her Glow Orbs are in the ground, however, alongside a Death Flower bush and a Money Tree. I've owned the SwiftGro gardening station for ages, but now that I'm playing with seasons, I got the rest of the Stone's Throw Greenhouse content. I need to remember to test out the little Plants Versus Zombies sunflower.

A collection of items from outside the house. Ralston became a level ten hunter. She is often unoccupied and chewing on their furniture. She needs a canine friend, which is what the gnome is there for—there's this adorable, stray Westminster Terrier that I want the family to adopt, but every time I try to have Rainbow engage, I'm told "Stray Dog is going home"!

From online research, it seems like this might be a bug only fixable with mods. I hope that the gnome can encourage it to visit.

You may notice some machinery on the right side of that screenshot. Once Ben had completed his twenty-five ice sculptures, I took a shortcut with the painting skill:

I enhanced his brain until he was at a high enough level to paint portraits. The Cerebralizing Brain Enhancing Machine is even worse than the MultiTab. For §6,500, you can alter your Sim's traits, or skill them up in almost any skill (including options the MultiTab doesn't have, like painting). It's not even scaled like the MultiTab, where the TabCasts get increasingly longer for higher skill levels. The "Brain Enhancement" takes maybe a Sim hour, regardless of whether you're going to level one or level ten. There's a six-hour cooldown that attempts to mitigate some of this cheatiness, but the workaround is so simple—the cooldown is specific to that machine. Thus the string of seven Brain Enhancers.

We sold off almost all of the remaining Tiberium stash to afford them. Ben worked his way to the end of the chain and was painting portraits before sunset.

His first painting, ever, was Rainbow's young adult portrait.

And Rainbow posing for her sculpture. I like when they do the sweet pose. I always scrap the sculpture it they do one of the crabby ones.

Her suite of museum pieces, because I'm always proud when I get the necessary skills in place in time. We had to buy and sell out the consignment store a few times to get the nicest camera, and now Rainbow's inventory is full of a bunch of music boxes and other junk.

With Rainbow's museum pieces finished, and a day left until her adult stage, now she and Ben were ready to start their family.

In anticipation of the baby, the house got some attention. I expanded and redid the bedroom. Rainbow (and myself) were all too happy to see the ugly Super Sleeper go.

They also got a proper clothes dryer, because using the clothesline felt too ridiculous with all the rain. It's always raining in this game. I might have one of Rainbow's unique rewards be the weather machine, because I'd like to actually see the sun every now and again.

Rainbow keeps a pair of jewels on her bedside table: a rainbow gem, and pink diamond, in honor of her sister.

Morning sickness...

Their toilet was clogged, so Rainbow had nowhere to go but outside.

After a few rounds of Tiberium-colored spew...

A few nursery objects have been purchased. A rocking chair in the bedroom.

Rainbow also got to go to the spa. I splashed out on the §7,500 package that gives the +75 moodlet, so that getting sick or disgraced (she's a minor celebrity from some gardening opportunities) hopefully won't threaten getting to select the baby's traits.

This isn't Ben reading a pregnancy book—he's reading a Science book.

Freed from the sculpting station, he's now stuck in the library, because I want him to be able to clone: Tiberium, so that money is no longer a worry, and Life Fruit and Deathfish, so that the changing seasons don't ever pose an issue for making Ambrosia.

However, this isn't as dire as the museum skills were, so he's been able to find some time to spend with Rainbow.

They stargazed on the last, crisp Autumn night...

And I think I caught the exact moment that Rainbow got an idea.