Here we go:
Meet Robert and Francis Farmer. I knew from the start that they would make all their food in their garden. I wasn't planning on letting them get food any other way. Take a good long look at Robert. Burn his image in your eyes. You'll find out why later.
First things first, they've moved in, they must have themselves a baby. Right?
Right after it's time to get to work. Since the sims defaults on them starting a new year on the last day of summer I knew I had to get started right away growing things. I've heard that others don't always get a harvest, and I didn't want to be one of those. They have three of each kind of tree, so 3 oranges, 3 lemons, 3 apples, and the only kind of crop they could plant in the ground would be tomatoes. Therefore I had him fertilize and plant all his plots with tomatoes.
First thing Francis did was make some food and eat a plate of it. Then, while she was cleaning up, Sookie Merlotte came over for a visit. She went out and began talking to the dark skinned girl, and what do you know, they got along famously. I hardly had to encourage them... they became friends right away and I think best friends in a few days.
Work hard little man. Your garden is your life.
Look at how well they get along. Seriously, they were made to be best friends.
That evening was the first time the two of them were able to have a seat and talk together. Remember what he looks like now.
I worked Robert hard on his garden, making him come out to tend it and spray it and water it every time the garden needed work. He slaved at the garden patches.
Look at that, you're pregnant Francis. Must go around and tell everyone the good news. She's a popularity sim, so she wants to have 20 best friends at the same time. That sounds like a really amazing goal, doesn't it?
When you're pregnant, you do what you have to in order to have fun. I was starting to get the hang of pregnant sims by this time, and so I wasn't having the same kind of issues I had on other families. Instead, with her, I simply couldn't keep her happy, her fun was ALWAYS dropping into the red. That meant that since her husband was SO very hung up on the garden, she had to find a way to get her fun in from something other than red hands.
Ooh! Bigger baby bump, she's gonna have that kid any day now. Hah, any day now... *ahem* Anyway, she was involved in serving a lot of food and cleaning up the house while she was pregnant. Every chance I got besides that I would sit her down and have her read about cooking. She kept wanting to make better and better meals. For a pregnant sim, she was one of the few that didn't have a specific meal she wanted every time she woke up. She rarely ever had a desire for some kind of food.
Look at those beautiful trees. Robert's been putting in a lot of time with them, hasn't he? So much so that he got himself a bronze garden talent badge, then the very next day he got himself a silver garden talent badge. Good job Robert, I'm proud of you.
Uh oh... it's time for a baby!
This was a happy day, today Francis gave birth to their first baby, first boy, and heir, Robert Jr. It was very easy for me to nickname him RJ from this moment on. Perhaps I simply wanted to keep in mind that he was different from his father Robert, but every note of him from this point has him down as RJ. This is an odd thing for me, because I rarely ever use initials for names. I don't understand it and I don't like it. Hmm... but I adore RJ.
Poor Robert doesn't really get to share in the goodness of baby birth, because the garden needed him so badly.
I had Robert going on a hike every morning as soon as the option was available, so by this time, Thursday, he had been on one several times. Also on Thursday he was able to get his first tree harvest. I can't remember which kind of tree it was that gave up crops.
Oh no! Today Robert ran into bee's on his hike! Don't bring those home with you!
Don't forget that blonde boy, you know what he looks like, right?
Because later that day he became a plant!
This is Friday, and I do occasionally have crashing issues with the game (who doesn't? raise your hands... I'm not seeing any hands in the air...) so when I was looking in on Robert and noticed that the game had frozen I thought, "Oh crap, I'm going to have to load again, and when was the last time I saved?". I waited though because I didn't hear the noise that usually accompanies a crashing. I waited, I waited... then finally my computer started playing the game again and I looked to see... PlantSim! I've never had a plantsim before, so this was both exciting and frightening for me. My friend told me that I needed to make sure that I had a sunlamp in the house for him, or he might die from lack of sunlight. That freaked me out, because 1.) RKC challenge here, and 2.) I think they had like... 40 dollars? So I had to sell a ton of things in the house to make enough money to buy the sunlamp.
See... house is missing all kinds of things. I only have one counter and 2 chairs now, think I sold an end table and something in the nursery. However, if you look above Francis, there is a nice sun lamp, situated just perfectly so that at night Robert can study mechanical and get sunlight at the same time.
This is when I mention that for some reason Robert likes mechanical skill. Right from the beginning he wanted to study it and he would focus on it every chance he got. Given that at this point he only had to worry about 3 things, Sunlight, Water and Love, it wasn't hard to keep getting his mechanical skill up. He doesn't need to sleep, he mostly reads all night long. Or takes care of RJ.
Did you know that when you have a PlantSim, taking a bath counts for their water? So.. um... he takes a lot of baths.
Francis was pretty freaked out by his plantself for a while, getting the fear that she would become one, worrying about him being one, wishing he'd be cured, you know, all that stuff, but really she was alright with it after a time.
So alright with it that she didn't even mind touching him. PlantSims get new clothes when they become plants, their hair changes, they have the green skin with ivy pattern all across it, and they have a habit of pausing in space to play, "Do Plants Love Me?" which is where you take a flower (they pick it off their head) and pull a petal off at a time saying, "Plants Love Me", pick another petal, "Plant's Love Me Not.". PlantSims do this so often you begin to think it's the only thing they know how to do.
Uh oh... Francis is pregnanat! Robert has an option to have a sporebaby, so does that mean that Francis' child won't possibly have PlantSim traits? A part of me wishes it would, another hopes it doesn't. This is Saturday.
Today on his hike, Robert caught a spider! Way to go Robert!
The only option that Robert had with most of the trees today was to talk to them. So I let him do that. Did you know that if a PlantSim talks to a plant that plant will become healthier? I watched my sad, sad trees go up into the green as Robert talked to them. Well now, that's a neat trick!
Talk to that tree Robert! Make it happy!
It's time, isn't it? Time for a baby to become a toddler. Come on RJ. Grow up. Grow up. Grow up! No, I don't have money to buy you a cake, you need to grow up on your own. I SAID grow up!
FINALLY! I believe the growing up process took a full four or five hours to do. Francis was in a terrible state when she went over to "Help with birthday" and by this point she was almost falling on the ground with issues.
I have also noticed that a great deal of my toddler males have bald heads. Really? Of all the heads you could give them... it's got to be bald? Ug.
Just in the nick of time! Robert manages to pick the tomato harvest. He's been working very hard on them, and almost all of his tomato's were tasty!
I'm not sure why, but apparently if you leave a plant sim alone long enough, they'll find things to do. Like jump rope.
I would like to know how a pregnant sim has so much energy they can toss their toddler child into the air. Wow... really? Well then, way to go Francis!
Robert likes spending time with RJ. It might partly be because he's a family sim, or it might be because he has nothing better to do with his time, but whatever it is, he spends a LOT of time with the boy. I'm pretty sure everything RJ learned he learned from his father.
OMG! JUST in time for the first snow, everything was harvested. All tree's accounted for, and all tomato plants gone. In a way the house looks so sad without the crops.
Another thing I would find Robert doing with RJ all the time was reading to him. I think RJ got the most attention of all sims children combined. Robert had nothing to do but spend time with his toddler son, and he hardly had any needs to occupy himself. So I'd just check up on them every once in a while, make sure he didn't need to go under the sunlamp or anything, and then move on to mommy.
And that would be week one of the Farmer family. This was exactly what I was looking at when I came into the game to start week two. I had a lot of fun with them, it was the first family I actually truly enjoyed playing for a while. I liked some of the others, but learning about the farming and having a PlantSim was pretty awesome for me. I don't often play with all the features of the expansions, so playing the RKC has given me the option to explore parts of the Sims I never really played with. I actually have really had a great time with it over all, and I'm looking forward to moving on and beginning my third week with my families. I have just a few more and I'm there!
C'mon greenbaby.
ReplyDelete:D I really, really, really like the skin they did for plantsims. It's quite fantastic!
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