Have you been shopping down town to buy clothes?
That’s the one thing I wish they’d kept the same.
Until down town gets more interesting stuff, it’s just not that fun to do the shopping.
As for do the grandchildren look alike?
This is a pic of three different boys. 
I know this was brought up a while ago, but the kids seem to do homework at least twice as fast when a parent helps them with it.
That Prima Strategy Guide sounds very useful. I wonder if it’s worth losing more studying time over though.
Yep, that’s the point of helping them. Even so, I’ve noticed that some kids are simply better at doing their homework than others. Probably related to personality.
Sims can also tutor Sims with the Career rewards as well, helping them gain skills faster. According to the Prima guide, the progression seems to be, from slowest to fastest:
From what I gather, 2 and 3 are about equal, as are 4 and 5.
In the same vein, if a toddler drinks smart milk, and his parent is wearing the helmet, they will learn to walk/talk/potty train very quickly.
The secret that I’ve figured out with potty training is to wait until the kid’s bladder is very low. Have the parent wearing the helmet, then feed him some smart milk (finagling it so that you can do this without the kid wetting himself takes a little practice) then potty train him. This way, the kid can be trained in one sitting (pardon the pun). If you train when the bar is only half empty, training stops as soon as it is full again, which can be a headache.
That’ll be great - something to try when I get home.
One irritating habit my toddlers sometimes have, though, is they won’t be potty-trained even if the bladder bar is running on E. The little brat - I mean the lovely child - screams when mom or dad puts him on the training seat. Mom or dad get mad and take the kid off the seat… while the bladder bar fills and the hygiene bar empties. Seems to happen especially often when the parent has a phobia of changing diapers.
I have never seen this. Is the toddler’s aspiration low?
Not really a problem with aspiration - the only time I’ve had a toddler with low aspiration was this little green brat named Oola, who was always in a grouchy mood because her fun was low… and I couldn’t get her to play with any of the toys I’d brought her.
Maybe what the problem is would be the relationship with the parent. It’s not bad per se, but in the rather lackluster 50’s on both ends. They usually don’t become best friends with the parents until about the day of the birthday party.
When my sims are babies I have the parents and sibling interact a lot with them and also as toddlers. INteracting with a baby is very good for social and the interactions with babies and toddler have more impact with the long term than similar interactions with older sims. Having a high long term really helps get through the teens.
Hell, I usually can’t get my parents to stop interacting with the babies. They could be seriously low on all their needs, but the baby sniffs in bed for a second and they abandon all else. Drives me nuts sometimes.
It sounds as if their hitting the pot a second too late.
I’ve had that happen a couple of times…you want it real low, but not too low.
I don’t think it actually bottoms out before “failure” like adults. Try getting them to it just a little sooner and see if that helps.
Also, as for the relationships between toddlers and parents it sounds as if they just need a little more quality time together. Maybe the parents are busy studying skills instead of snuggling? Mine usually reach “best friends” while they are still in baby mode, shortly before becoming toddlers.
Are you guys experiencing less or more glitches since the patch?
Ever since I installed mine, it’s been doing goofy stuff - like I achieved a pretty good relationship with a headmaster during evaluation. A few days after that, the headmaster calls to complain I haven’t been calling him lately. I called him back and the Sim got stuck at the phone. I had him hang up and tried to call back the headmaster, only now his icon is gone (as if he were already on the lot). I shrugged and gave up only to have him come over at 5 the next day for another evaluation. Luckily I had just raised a toddler into a child, so it was a good thing - just weird. 
Yeah, I keep a careful eye on each of the sims’ queues when there’s a baby in the house, and shoot down any baby interactions right away. Gives me a case of mouse-elbow, but that’s much better than a parent waking a baby up who’s sleeping and then setting the kid down on the floor… meanwhile missing the carpool to work.
Bad as the nanny is, I use her and keep the parents going to work (unless a Family aspiration). The baby and toddler phases are my least favorite in the game. Just a headache. That’s how I feel about children in real life - how’s that for verisimilitude?
By the way, has anyone had problems with sims not being able to get their career rewards, even if they’re qualified? It’s happened once with a chef, and then again with an athlete. In both cases, the household already had a surgical trainer. I’ve had households with other career rewards already in them (including athlete) and haven’t had problems, so it doesn’t seem to be a case of only being able to have one reward per house.
Are you going into a higher level of the job from the computer/straight out of highschool? If you skip the job level in which the career object is given, I don’t believe it comes up as an option.
A way around this is to quit and use the newspaper to get the job.
Hmm… I’ll give that a try. Thanks!
We had the headmaster show up on the lot of a family who had just moved in. He stoop in the corner of the lot frozen. At five he came over and the whole headmaster visit thing started. I did not remember calling him. I worked hard to get the tour scores up and had them make a meal, then in the middle of eating he vanished. It was then I realized they did not even have children.
You must have gotten my headmaster. I invited him to the house, gave a tour, and even prepared a turkey dinner. Things were going beautifully until about an hour before he was set to leave, when he suddenly vanished.
At least now I know where he went.
I’ve got to say, the ‘Headmaster’ scenario has to be one of my least favourite aspects of the game. In Strangetown I invited him over, he got out of his car, gave his speil then left immediately! I wouldn’t mind, excpet the Sim was earning megabucks, er, megasimoleons and therefore had a house stuffed with paintings and what have you.
My main focus now is the crime family I’m working on, the Reipers. The head of the family is a Criminal Mastermind, with various counterfeiters/getaway drivers in there as well. The younger son brought home a friend from school who proceeded to insult the eldest daughter. I had her drowned and sold the tombstone, bwahahaha.
I hope in this new expansion pack we get some more career tracks. There should also be more consequences to your chosen career, especially if you reach the top of it. Kind of strange when a dish-washer gets the same recognition on the street as the celebrity chef, if you ask me. Also, less demands on poor pregnant sims. I sent a pregnant sim to bed with a 3/4 full hunger bar, by the morning she had starved to death on the bathroom floor!
One last thing - how does the ‘Write a novel’ interaction on a computer work? I’ve had a full creativity sim type finish a novel, then nothing.
Did you get a little message box saying the novel was finished (the same kind you get after finishing a painting)? It takes several sessions of typing to finish one, usually. After it’s done, your sim should get a phone call telling him how much he earned in royalties.
Yup, I get the box - if there’s a phone call, I’ve missed it. I’ll look out for it henceforth, thanks.
Is the thinking cap unlimited use or is it like the aspiration/skill vacuum, which can only be used a few times?
