Round 15: June 2024
(Julia is 15.)
Narrated by Riley Cooper.
I'd like to think I wasn't as annoying as Liam has been after starting high school. He acts like he knows everything and everyone else knows nothing. Most of the times he really gets on my nerves.
He likes to get on people's nerves in general. His latest favourite pastime is annoying the hell out of anyone who happens to walk by our house.
Too bad for him that dad happened to notice him do it one day and made him apologize to the woman he had been insulting. Dad's really good at bursting your bubble if your head's getting too big for your own good and he doesn't take any bullshit from anyone, especially not from his kids.
I've been hanging out at Generation X but now mom and dad make me take Liam with me. It's not as bad as I had thought though. We usually just play the arcade games or pool and if I want to chat up some girls then he knows not to cramp my style.
I met this really nice girl there some time ago and we've become friends. Her name's Julia and she lives in a city nearby. A lot of kids from her school come to Wellington during summer because there's no teen hangout in her town.
Being the oldest kid in our family also means that I'm in charge during the day when mom and dad are at work. They were a bit reluctant at first to let me babysit Brady and Tate but in the end they said it's fine with them if I want to give it a try.
It's not exactly a difficult job anyway. Mom wakes Tate up quite early in the morning so he takes a long nap during the day. I cook up some kind of lunch, usually sandwiches and then Liam and I just keep the kids occupied until mom and dad come home from work.
And it's not like we're completely unsupervised. Grandma Jackie sometimes brings us lunch from her restaurant and grandma Elissa often comes over if she's not at work.
Mom got a promotion and a hefty bonus in the spring. She and dad decided to use the money to build a pool in our backyard. It gave me a great excuse to invite Julia over one weekend saying that we could hang out in the backyard and swim in the pool. Mom was really excited that I had invited a girl over even though I kept telling her that we're just friends. She gave me a big hug and said "my baby's all grown up!".
Mom really liked Julia and they talked for what felt like hours. Not exactly what I had in mind. I guess it's kind of nice though that mom likes her. At least my parents don't have anything against me dating someone, unlike uncle
Sam who says his kids can't start dating until they're 15. I think that
Ross and
Madelyn probably feel differently.
We went inside for lunch and mom kept asking Julia about her parents and job and school stuff and everything.
We finally got some privacy when dad ushered everyone into our family room to play "Don't wake the llama". I took Julia by the hands and leaned in closer.
I was so nervous but she leaned in closer too and we kissed! It was my first kiss ever and I bumped my nose on her cheek but it was still perfect.
I asked if she'd like to be my girlfriend and she said yes! She had to catch a bus to her home town so I walked her out to the bus stop. We agreed to meet again as soon as possible.
Liam was in the living room when I came back and I guess I had a goofy grin on my face because he immediately started teasing me about having a girlfriend. It shut him up when I told him that Julia really is my girlfriend now. "Good for you" he said.
And then he congratulated me like a loving little brother only can.
Notes:
- Title reference: Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez.
- Liam rolled the "PMS - annoy next walk by 6 times" ROS. Good thing he's a young boy going through puberty because otherwise it wouldn't have made any sense.
- I did some renovations on the house because it only had 4 bedrooms and they needed 5. Nothing major, I just made the parents' bedroom smaller so I could fit one more bedroom upstairs. I also made the study downstairs a bit smaller and turned the rest of the space into a family gaming room. I'm planning to do a proper tour of the house but only after the family can afford to do something to the exterior, it's still quite bare.
That was nice - I love it when the story is told from a young person's perspective, kid or teen!
ReplyDeleteI like what you let us glimpse from the family house a lot (yellow being my fav. colour anyway!). There is one bit that puzzles me: in the pictures taken in the family room, there is a line drawn on the floor in a square around the baby crib. What does it mean?
A tour of the house will be interesting!
I like telling the story from a teen's POV, I think I've never done it from a child's POV though.
DeleteThe line around the baby crib (which is actually in the living room) is just a space divider so if the kid is sleeping in the crib he won't wake up from the sounds coming from television or phone or anything. Sims can just walk over the line but it blocks the sound. It's very convenient also if you have ie. two babies sleeping in the same room so if one of them wakes up crying then the other one will just keep sleeping.
Thanks for reading. :)
A clever device, that space divider! Thanks for explaining :-)
DeleteI too want to see more of the house and yes, is he ever annoying, lol
ReplyDeleteI'll try to get the tour done soon. It's fun to play an annoying sim for a change, I don't usually make my sims do what Liam did.
DeleteThanks for reading. :)
I love the genetic diversity with this family. You can tell they're brothers but they're not clones of each other.
ReplyDeleteHa, nice work, Ben! Keep those kids of yours in line!
But aw, Riley is really cute with his new girlfriend. I'm sure Denise was making him want to crawl into a hole and die but it was sweet that she got along so well with Julia.
I didn't know about that room divider trick with the cribs! I'll have to consider that if I ever can't give a toddler his own room. I wonder if it works the other way? To stop the other room's occupants from waking up if the toddler starts crying?
I really like how these brothers look. I can't wait to see Tate grow up because he looks different from al the others. I think he's the one who looks most like Ben.
DeleteRiley and his girlfriend are such a cute couple. And I think Denise is really excited and at the same time terrified that her son has a girlfriend.
The room divider is awesome. I've used it a lot for twins so that they can sleep in the same room and the other won't wake up if one of them starts crying. It works the other way too. I s0metimes have the crib in the parents' room but I surround it with the divider and then I just wake up one of the parents if the baby cries and the other just sleeps through it.
Thanks for reading. :)
That room divider trick is a great idea! I never realised that they block sound, I only knew that you can't use them in apartments because it will see part of the room as a public area (although the results of that can be hilarious!)
ReplyDeleteAw, Riley and Julia are sweet... I like the relationship between him and Liam, too. Nice way to fit the ROS in.
Oh yeah, you can't use the room divider in apartments but most of my sims live in houses anyway.
DeleteRiley has become one of my favourite sims over the past couple of (sim)years. He's so cute with his girlfriend.
Thanks for reading. :)
Riley and Julia are adorable together, glad that she was happy to accept his advances and proposition of going steady. Equally nice that his Mom approves. Liam was cracking me up! I just knew he had to have that ROS, because it didn't seem like him to terrorize random people walking by. It did fit in nicely for him being a young tween kid, and testing his limits, and feeling top of the world. Their house is cute, looking forward to the walk through.
ReplyDeleteRiley's a Romance sim so he was desperate to get his first kiss and then I thought he might as well date the girl since they really seem to like each other. It's always a bonus when the mom approves although in Riley's age it might also be a disadvantage.
DeleteLiam was cracking me up too! My sims don't usually act that way. I'm glad that I was able to include the ROS because when I rolled it I was completely clueless about how to write it in.
I promise the tour will come soon(ish).
Thanks for reading. :)