Suedehead

Round 24: Spring 2020

last update/next update

Arianna Weaver is 65, Liam is 57, Jonas Lachance is 42, Tatiana is 37, Dominic is 10, Audrey is 8 and Edward is 5.

(Jacob and Claudia are both 19)

Narrated by Jonas Lachance

Tatiana is now the principal of Sullivan Primary School, which the whole family is really proud of, no one more than Tatiana herself. Her grandmother was the principal of the high school, back when Tatiana and I were there, and I think it's always been a goal of hers to get to that level one day.


She decided that she didn't have enough on her plate though, with three children and a school to run and she started trying to talk me into trying for just one more baby.

For a long time, it was all she talked about because I took a little convincing.

It wasn't that I didn't want another baby. I'm just concerned that adding another kid into the mix might leave us a little overstretched, especially Tatiana.

Even now when she comes from work, she launches herself headlong into chores and helping Arianna with the farm.

By 9 o'clock, she's exhausted and I usually have to wake her up so she can go to bed. Having another baby is going to amplify that.

I agreed to start trying only if Tatiana would take it a little easier, so she had Arianna start having the kids help with the crops instead.

They're actually doing a pretty great job too. They're not quite to the point where they can work unsupervised but Arianna's not ready to completely hand over the reins to anyone yet anyway.

So everyone's happy now. Tatiana is relaxing a little more and we're trying for another baby.

Tatiana's brother Jacob came home from college to visit recently. Audrey was really excited to see him again.

She's been training the dogs and was keen to show Jacob their new tricks but she had trouble getting his attention.

Most of Jacob's attention was focused on Claudia, the girl he brought with him and is currently dating. Tatiana already kind of knew Claudia, from back when she started teaching but the rest of us had never met her before.

Tatiana dragged Jacob away as soon as she could to interrogate him. She's way more keen for Jacob to "settle down" than Liam or Arianna are and I think she heard wedding bells. Jacob's insisting it's not that serious though. They're just dating.

Liam and Arianna already adore her. Claudia was raised on a farm and is planning on going back to live there once she graduates, so that completely won Arianna over.

I'm not sure why Liam is so taken with her but he was very impressed with her and they chatted for a long time.

Maybe it was the fact that she helped out with the dishes. Parents seem to love that.

We agreed before we started trying that we weren't going to go for fertility treatments or anything like that and that if it didn't happen naturally for us this time, it wouldn't happen at all. Tatiana is starting to feel like this might be it and it's not going to happen. I've been trying to simultaneously console her and prepare her for the fact that it might not happen.

It really wouldn't be so bad if we had to stop at 3. Dominic is getting so big and I can't wait to see him start high school and watch where life takes him. He's great with Audrey and Edward and he'd be great with a new baby too, but there'd be such a big gap. We might not see the same closeness that we see with our three now.

Audrey has decided she wants to be a dog trainer when she grows up. We'll see if she still feels the same in a few years but right now, she's very insistent. She just adores our dogs - she's just like her mother.

Tatiana and I were both a bit worried about Edward when he started school - all our kids are on the shy side, like us, but Edward is definitely the most reserved. We were really hoping he wouldn't have trouble making friends.

Thank goodness but we didn't need to worry at all. He's made a whole bunch of friends at school, so the house is usually overrun with kids every afternoon.

We're still going to keep trying but I'm not really holding out much hope. We've got a great family already, so it won't be the end of the world if Edward ends up being our last.

Notes:

• Title is from Suedehead by Morrissey.
• Tatiana has a very persistent baby want (I even unlocked it and it stayed put) and Jonas doesn't mind either way. So I'm letting them try but I'm not going to any extreme measures. I would be pretty surprised if Tatiana got pregnant at this point - she'll be 39 next time I play her - but you never know. Never would have thought Araminta would get pregnant at 51 and the game sure showed me! Personally, I'd like to see another baby from them but I'm secretly relieved she's not pregnant too - the house is still quite crowded!
• Liam rolled the Meet someone new ROS this round and the "someone new" was Claudia. That ROS could really be fulfilled by having the Sim go out to a community lot and meeting a random townie but I try to make them a little more meaningful than that, seeing that's the whole point. So I checked Liam's relationship panel to see if he knew either Patience or Claudia yet and he hadn't met Claudia. If he hadn't met Patience, Jacob may well be dating her right now! But anyway, I had Jacob bring Claudia home to meet the family to fulfill Liam's ROS. I'm imagining they started dating sometime between Autumn 2020 and now, off camera. I don't know if this will be a permanent thing but I'm hoping they'll stay together for at least a little while, just to give me a break from the Jacob drama for a round or so! It's not over, I'm pretty sure of that!