Lump

Round 34: August 2040 (Winter)

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Rob Ashton is 39, Patience is 38, Felicity is 7 and Patrick is 4. 

(Claudia is 39, Josie is 38, Daphne is 9, Jude is 8, Iris is 6 and Andrew is 4)

Narrated by Patience Ashton

I don’t want to push her into anything but I really do think Felicity could follow in my footsteps one day.

She is so incredibly dramatic. You should see the elaborate deaths she acts out when she plays with Patrick.

Patrick loves it, so of course, she does it more. There’s little she loves more than positive attention.

With my current film, I don’t finish on set until 7pm, so Rob has been on dinner duty for the past few months. He’s a better cook than me, so I’m sure he’s not getting any complaints. 

I’m really missing family dinner time though. I feel so out of the loop on all the goings on at school. 

I don’t get home too late, so I do get to see them before they go off to bed but they’re often already whiny and tired by that point, especially Patrick. 

Patrick has always been an easy kid to parent but he’s just switched to full day pre-school a couple of weeks ago and the adjustment is wearing on him. He’s asleep before I even turn out his light at night. 

We can’t complain about that, as it gives us a nice few hours of time together before we go off to bed ourselves.

Rob and I are both off work on the weekends, so we try to do things together as a family then. Right now, it’s often board games at home. 

As much as I love hanging out with the kids, I am getting a little tired of endless games of Don’t Wake The Llama. 

I think Rob is too. Felicity and Patrick love it, so we put up with it. But as soon as it gets warmer, we’re going to venture outside and do something different. 

Claudia and Josie often bring their kids over on the weekend, just for a group play date and a catch up for us.

Iris and Felicity are only a grade apart in school and they’ve become quite close friends.

They usually go and play on their own up in Felicity’s room, often accompanied by our dog Scotty.

Patrick stays downstairs with Daphne, Jude and Andrew and plays yet more Don’t Wake The Llama. 

It’s one of Andrew’s favourite games, because he can be noisy and a little destructive. 

Andrew has to make everything loud. He’s like a younger, masculine version of Josie. 

I don’t know how Josie and Troy have kept their sanity.

They probably have it a little easier than Josie's parents did, seeing I’ve never seen him kick another kid in the head, like Josie did to me when we were kids. 

After I was nominated for that award a couple of years back, Rob was very worried about what the increased visibility would do to our family and our lifestyle.

He thought the media would start following us around and make it difficult for us to live our lives.

But that really hasn’t happened. We’re still able to go out and do everything we did before. No one bothers us.

Sometimes I’ll catch a photographer out of the corner of my eye but if they want to take a picture of me buying groceries, then whatever. 

I’m not going to let it stop me from doing whatever I need or want to do. 

Rob’s still more comfortable when we’re hanging out at home but I think he’d feel that way anyway, no matter what I did for a living. 

I always wanted a whole heap of children but I’m 38 now and only have two, so that’s probably not going to happen!

I also happened to marry a man who has always been pretty adamant that he only wanted two, which also makes having another far less likely. 

So I’ve been on birth control since Patrick was born and am absolutely fanatical about taking it.

But Rob and I just found out that I am pregnant again, so birth control is never 100%!

Rob took the news pretty well, considering he was absolutely sure he was done with kids. 

It’s very early days and with my history of miscarriage, we want to be cautious. We know the rest of the family is going to be incredibly excited for us when we share our news but for now, we’re keeping it quiet.

This is such a massive shock. Neither of us were expecting to add to our family at all and we’re still processing. I’m sure I’ll be thrilled once I get a few more weeks in but I’m not quite there yet!

Notes:

• Title is from Lump by the Presidents of the United States of America.
• Patience's pregnancy was very much unplanned! With my birth control system, Patience is on BC and Rob is not. Usually one sim on BC is enough, but obviously not this time. I'm kind of excited, even though it's kind of screwed up my plans. It always feels weird when Sullivan doesn't have any babies due! Patience is due in May 2041.
• And look, they really were talking about the pregnancy at the end there! This never used to happen in Sullivan 1.0, so I was really happy to see that little speech bubble!
• Not much else to say, except sorry that updates have been so sparse! I've been quite busy with work, then had a bit of a sim slump. Now I'm on holidays and people keep wanting me to go out and be social with them, rather than letting me sit at home and play my sims. ;) But I'm hoping to be able to start playing Anthony and Noah before I go back to work. At least!