1. Hello! Welcome back to Auspicious It Ain’t, a Nickle & Dimed
Challenge. The challenge was originally created by Yamx on
thesims2.com, and has been reposted on Mod The Sims by
Amalia81. The challenge is to have an unskilled single parent raise
at least two children to adulthood. There is no scoring; keeping
your head above water is about as good as you can hope for.
Last time, the Toddler (Genevive) became a Child, and the baby
(Beaudelaire) became a Toddler. Nobody starved to death or got
taken by the Social Worker, so all in all it’s been a rousing success.
Let’s see if we can keep it up!
2. One note before we start: I would like to apologize for the fact that
many of these pictures were taken at night. Beaudelaire naps
during the day and doesn’t sleep through the night -- and when he’s
up, everyone’s up. Genevive has school during the day, and since
Ygraine has finally figured out that when they sleep, she sleeps,
not much happens during the day.
3. Now that Genevive is a Child, she and Ygraine can help keep each
other’s Fun and Social meters up with a nice game of Red Hands or
four.
4. It doesn’t always work as well as you’d think.
GENEVIVE: Mom, will you help me with my homework?
YGRAINE: I’m potty training your brother, sweetie. (gestures
vaguely to her left) Ask Ralph, okay?
GENEVIVE: Who? (suspiciously) You’re not seeing invisible
telepathic ninja rabbits like Dad, are you?
YGRAINE: : Er, no. Of course not. Don’t be silly. I’ll help you
after I’ve trained your brother. And fed him. And cleaned the
kitchen and the bathroom.
GENEVIVE: I’ll take care of the kitchen and the bathroom.
5. Which she did, because Genevive is pretty cool. Only five Neat
points, but she often acts like she’s got eight or nine. The family
won’t need a maid with her around. (Just as well, since they can’t
afford one.)
6. True to her word, Ygraine taught Genevive how to study.
9. Although it did take rather a lot out of her.
Pop quiz: Is the green stink cloud coming from
a) Ygraine
b) Beaudelaire
Answer:
c) Both of them
10. Because Ygraine is getting more skilled at juggling everything,
Beaudelaire actually got a bath in fairly short order.
11. Ygraine even managed to get the bills out of the mailbox, and not a
moment too soon! Paying them used up about a quarter of the
family’s bank balance, so getting a job soonish would probably be
a good idea…
12. It won’t be while there’s still a small child in the house, though.
Childcare is not cheap.
Although Genevive does a marvelous job of helping out.
GENEVIVE: See? See how this had four corners and that has four
corners? Put it in there.
BEAUDELAIRE: Corner fit?
GENEVIVE: Yes, the corner will fit. You just have to turn it.
13. Genevive usually puts the leftovers away too.
Although I have downloaded and usually use MogHughson’s
Simply Leftovers mod, which allows a group meal to be put away
as individual plates, I am not using that functionality in this
challenge. It drastically reduces the chance of spoiled food and
clouds of flies, so I’ve decided it isn’t really fair.
14. The family was so functional this time around that Ygraine even
managed to get dressed briefly, for the first time in four days.
Of course, then she had to repair the tub, but that’s a small price to
pay for looking sharp, right?
15. And since I am now out of pictures, I will leave you with a cute
picture of Beaudelaire being put to bed by his mother.
You don’t get to take many pictures in this challenge, what with
the whole trying-not-to-let-anybody-starve-or-be-removed thing…
Until next time, Happy Simming!
