Unbreakable

Round 32: June 2035 (Winter)

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Kimberly Carmody is 64, Nick Moretti is 32, Sarah is 30, Thomas is 4, Ryan is 3 and Catherine is 1.
(Caleb is 53, Abigail is 52, Jesse is 50, Cara is 46, Troy is 32, Susannah and Sam are both 25, Felix is 4, Jude is 3, Zac is 9 months old)

Narrated by Nick Moretti

Zac isn't quite old enough to play with Catherine yet but she's already very interested in him. She watches everything he does very closely.

Once he gets a little older, I think he and Catherine will be good buddies.

Susannah comes over here with Zac once a week or so. Kimberly would like it to be more often but the visits are stressful enough for Susannah as it is.

If Sam comes, Kimberly will inevitably get into an argument with him. They didn't get along from the start but Zac's arrival hasn't improved their relationship.

He's in his third job since he and Susannah got together and is thinking of looking for a fourth, which Kimberly is appalled by.

Sam doesn't think it's any of her business; Kimberly thinks anything involving how her grandchild is living is most definitely her business.

So sometimes Sam will skip the visits and Kimberly will instead complain about Sam the whole time.

Susannah tries not to let it bother her in front of Kimberly but Sarah says it's wearing on her.

Sarah has been attempting to reassure her that Kimberly will get used to Sam but she really doesn't know if that's true or not.

Poor Sarah is constantly worried about it. It's hard for her to see her sister upset and fighting with her mother.

Before Sam came along, I would have said Kimberly was a pretty great mother-in-law. Now I think maybe I just got lucky and she happened to like me.

Kimberly is a wonderful grandmother though and I'm really grateful for that. Every Thursday, she'll let Lucy run things at the salon and she stays home with Ryan and Catherine.

Ryan and Catherine both love Thursdays. They love it having Kimberly home with them all day.

I wish my parents or stepparents could spend so much time with the kids but they're all a lot younger than Kimberly and are still working full time.

That will likely be the case until the kids are in high school, so we try to make the most of it when we do see each other.

We visit as often as we can and we get frequent reciprocal visits as well. It's probably pretty close to evening out at this point.

Thomas thinks it's very cool that he has more grandparents than most kids. He didn't know the difference last year but now that he's at pre-school, he's realised not all children have so many.

I even heard him bragging about it to his friend Felix when he came home with him after school the other day.

I was hoping that the kids wouldn't inherit my shyness and even at four, I can tell Thomas definitely hasn't.

He loves pre-school and he has easily made friends with every single kid in his class, as well as a couple of older kids. If Sarah and I allowed it, he would have friends over every afternoon.

We had dinner at Ethan and Maia's place for dinner the other week. We usually go out with them instead but Maia has been exhausted lately.

She's about halfway through her pregnancy right now and she and Ethan are both looking forward to meeting their baby. Maia's also looking forward to not being pregnant any more.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that Sarah was pregnant with our first. It's such a scary and fun time.

Maia especially is nervous but she'll be great. She'll have Ethan and her whole family will be more than willing to help if she needs it. Sarah and I have offered a hand if they need anything as well.

We're going to be surrounded by babies in a few months. Troy brought Jude over to play with our kids and told us that Josie is pregnant with their second.

She's only about 8 weeks along, so I'm not sure Troy was supposed to tell us yet. We're going to keep our mouths closed, just to keep him out of trouble.

Sarah and I are so ready for a fourth baby and all our friends having babies is making us want one more.

I'd probably stay home with the baby again, if we did. I enjoyed it last time and got to spend so much more time with Catherine than I did with Thomas or Ryan.

Sarah wouldn't mind a longer maternity leave, except for the fact that it really slowed her down at work. Seeing that doesn't bother me, me taking the leave instead works better for our family.

It's all moot though, as another baby is just a terrible idea, at least at the moment. We'd need to move and we just don't have the money.

It's hard but we might just have to forget about a fourth for a while and see how we're doing a few years down the track.

Extras:
Oh my gosh, I took so many pics that didn't fit in to this update! You'll all have to indulge me for a little bit. ;)

Maia seems to be suffering from some pretty bad gas during this pregnancy. Nick and Ethan both laughed and Sarah glared at her! You'd think she'd have some sympathy, having probably gone through the same thing once or twice. ;)

This was just an excuse to photograph Nick in his new uniform. ;)

Catherine threw up all over Abigail.

Catherine thought this was pretty funny, though Abigail wasn't so impressed.

But Catherine is too cute to be annoyed at for too long!

I took far more pictures of the kids and their grandparents than I needed.

I'm curious to see Ryan as a child. I'm hoping his nose grows out a little!

But he's still really cute!

As is Catherine.

Did you guys know that toddlers playing with toys from the same toy box would talk to each other? I didn't! I knew they'd added this functionality with Family Fun Stuff but I don't have that pack.

Thomas wanted to earn some body skill points (he's a Sports Sim). It was too cold for soccer in the park, so he worked out to the stereo. Which is kind of hilarious for a four-year-old. Because he's his father's son, he rolled the want to study Physiology after this and then proceeded to max out his body skill within about 10 seconds.

A cute mother and son moment...

...and an equally adorable father and daughter moment.

Thomas is a great big brother. He doesn't mind sharing his room with Ryan and he rolls up the want to play peek-a-boo all the time. Based on the wants Thomas rolls, I think he's probably a future Knowledge/Family like Nick.

Notes:

• Title is from Unbreakable by Speedstar.
• Kimberly and Sam actually briefly became friends during this session but they just cannot get along. I think it lasted about three seconds before Sam said something offensive about school buses or whatever and they lost their friendship. So um...this might continue for a while.
• I'm really glad that Kimberly hasn't yet earned all the cash rewards for her salon, because this family seriously needs the money! They started the round with less than $500. They have considerably more now but things are still tight.
• Which is why the possibility of a fourth baby is still up in the air. Nick and Sarah both want one, Kimberly and Abigail both want another grandchild, so I'd be making a lot of Sims very happy. But there's no room in this house and they don't have the money to move to a larger one. So we'll see how things go for them.
• Maia's bump is huge, I know. She turned up at Kimberly's salon and got her third trimester bump a couple of months early. ;)