Pot kettle black

Round 25: Autumn 2021

last update/next update

Finn Romilly and Victoria Kirby are both 20, Declan is 5 months old.
(Claudia Kirby is 20, Araminta Romilly is 58, Henry is 56, Elspeth is 7, Ione Moretti is 25, Trent Kirby is 51 and Megan is 49)

Narrated by Victoria Kirby

Declan is 5 months old now and I feel like Finn and I aren't ever going to get to sleep in again. When we were in the dorms, I used to love cuddling up in bed if we didn't have anywhere to go in the morning.

Now though, we're up before sunrise every morning. Declan doesn't always cry but we end up getting up anyway - he usually needs something.

I like to think we're doing okay with him though. He's kind of like his dad, in that he's usually very cheerful.

Usually. He has his cranky moments but he's a pretty easygoing baby.

I will say that is actually nice having our own little place, even though I loved living in the dorms. I didn't love the food in the cafeteria or having only one room to call my own. Finn says he hated just about everything in the dorms but I think he mostly just hated Amar.

Finn and I both know that we'll get married eventually, though we're not actually engaged yet. We're more like engaged to be engaged, I guess. I think Finn wants to ask me properly, which I am not at all opposed to!

We don't want people to think we're getting married just because we had a baby, so we'll probably wait until after graduation but I'm already getting excited. Finn is such a good dad and he's going to be a great husband too.

It's almost like we're already an old married couple anyway. All of our "dates" are at home now. I hate asking Claudia to come and watch Declan and we don't want to pay for a babysitter when we're supposed to be saving for a house.

Claudia insists she doesn't mind babysitting though. She comes over almost every day and she makes a beeline for Declan.

I'm sure she'd rather be spending time with Jacob than dealing with a squirming baby though, especially a smelly one.

But I really do appreciate it when she comes over so I can go to class or study. Classes are definitely harder for me with a baby. Finn just seems to show up and his professors fall all over themselves to give him As but I'm not so lucky. My GPA has dropped a little since Declan was born but if I keep working, I might still be able to graduate with honours. A 4.0 is out of the question now though.

Finn's family has been so amazing through this whole thing. We were both so worried about telling them when I got pregnant. I don't think either of his parents were thrilled but they were supportive from the very beginning.

And it's not just his parents either. Finn's little sister Elspeth is always wanting to hold Declan. She's a little young, so we haven't let her yet but she really loves being an aunt.

Finn's older sister is awesome too. She's due with twins any day now, so we've swapped pregnancy stories a bit and I'm sure we'll have plenty more to talk about once the babies arrive. I'm so glad Declan wasn't twins! I was a little afraid he would be, seeing I'm a twin, Dad's a twin and my grandmother was a twin. Twins seem to run in our family!

Finn actually has more experience with babies than Ione does. Not just Declan, but when Elspeth was born, Finn was old enough to help but Ione was away at college when she was really tiny. So dealing with two babies will be something else for her and Evan!

Having Declan hasn't been quite as disastrous as I assumed it would be when I first looked at that pregnancy test.

Except Mum's reaction. Her reaction was as bad as I thought it would be and it was exactly what I had feared all along. Once he got used to the idea of his daughter being pregnant, Dad was fantastic.

Dad is a great grandpa, even if he probably still would have been happy for me to not get pregnant for at least another 5 years.

It's only recently that Mum has started to be at all engaged with Declan, which I have to admit was really worrying me.

Mum and I are still on shaky ground but she's better with Declan at least, and I think we might be getting there. I suspect Dad might have had words with her, or maybe even Finn. I'm glad to see even little signs of improvement. She barely even spoke to me while I was pregnant and has been a little icy ever since.

But she's been oddly non-critical over the past couple of weeks and I feel like things are getting better. Though sometimes when I'm doing something with Declan, I can feel her watching me over my shoulder, probably biting her tongue. I wish I didn't think that way but it's hard not to, when she spent the first few months of Declan's life picking at everything I did. It's been quite nice to not hear that everything I'm doing is wrong. It's hard enough to have a baby at university without that.

I really wish she'd try harder with Finn though. He gets a lot of blank looks when he tries to talk with Mum and I have the distinct impression she's not all that interested in much he has to say.

Extras:
Behind Victoria's head, you can see a bulletin board with some postcards pinned on them. I have some postcard racks (as well as the greeting card racks) in my newsagent on campus and between them, Finn and Victoria have bought four autonomously. Finn seems a bit confused, as he's bought two Christmas postcards and it's autumn in Sullivan but I hung them up anyway. I have crap from four years ago on my bulletin board!

Notes:

• Title is from Pot Kettle Black by Wilco.
• Finn's still got a 4.0 but Victoria's GPA has dropped to a 3.7. Which I think it would have done even without Declan - she doesn't get the want to skill all that much.
• Megan rolled the want to play with Declan this session, so I figure she might slowly be getting over some of her hang-ups about the way he came into the world. Trent rolled a lot of wants for him when I played the Kirby house but I don't think Megan ever did. About time she started acting a little bit more like a Family Sim!
• As for Megan and Finn, none of that was set up, sadly for poor Finn! She really is quite standoffish with him. She stops short of actually scowling or rolling her eyes but she'll look around the room as if she's bored and cross her arms a lot. She doesn't enjoy Finn's alien talk, apparently (that's what he's talking about in the first picture!)
• OK, so Jacob didn't end up being in this after all but I did note down his attraction scores. I did it for all the girls he's currently at college with, just for fun. He has a mind-blowing 136 with Josie, which is weird because I know that I had written down that they had only one bolt when she was a freshman. He already had the Romance bonus then and she still doesn't have it, so I'm not sure what's up there. She hasn't tried to flirt with him for a long time, if you're wondering. I think she really was doing it to bug Maia!
• Speaking of Maia, he has a 61 with her and a 60 with Patience. I said this in Comments yesterday but his total score with Patience is 53 and hers is 115. I guess that's because he's "going steady" with Claudia and is hence less likely to cheat. He has an 86 with Claudia and an 88 with Victoria.
• I can't believe Finn and Victoria have only one year until graduation! Finn needs to study more still but I'll have him do that back in the hood, most likely. I still haven't figured out exactly what I'm doing with that but it'll be another couple of years and I may hold off on it until they've settled themselves for a while.