Sims2: The Ziglar Mansion

The Ziglar mansion at night.  One of the oldest houses in Strangetown, it sits on the town limits at the far east end of Main Street, with the more modest houses of the founders and their families nearby.  Leandro is the great-grandson of founder Zoe Ziglar.  His grandmother Lea left the farm, married well, and built this house with her husband.  Leandro's father Jeremy Siefert added on the large room on the right and opened a music store, which Mason took over and has done very well with.

Until recently Leandro and his wife Marion Almassizadeh (a former pizza delivery worker) have two teenaged children, Mason and Leah.  Just in the last day they've had a new baby, Mateo, born, and have decided that they should share their good fortune with more of Strangetown's children.  They've already put in a call to adopt and plan to have ten children in total.

This was the fourth house established in my current game, and only the second that my founders didn't build themselves.  I'm not entirely sure now, but I think it might have been an existing unpopulated house in Strangetown.

Marion and Leandro rolled to have two children, but on the last day she could possibly 'try for baby' (5 days to elder), she rolled a want to have a baby.  I'm a sucker for the babeez (surely that fact is well established by now), so I went ahead with it for them.  Marion then rolled the want for ten children, so I'm going to go ahead and let them try and do that.  There can be a maximum of 8 Sims in a household, so having 10 children is tricky... hopefully Mason and Leah will be old enough to move out in time to make some space, and perhaps poor old Leandro will have to go as well, since he's not part of the baby-creation process anymore.

I have determined that it's the partner who wants the ten children who needs to call for the adoption - adopted children only seem to count for one parent, the one who makes the call.  This was a problem once when I had someone who wanted ten children, but had had some taken by the social worker - they weren't allowed to adopt again, and having the partner do the adoption didn't satisfy their want.

The things that a Sim 'wants' re-randomize every time one of the wants is satisfied, or when they wake up after a long sleep.  (Just putting them to sleep and getting them up again immediately isn't sufficient to re-roll the wants, so that little potential hack has been guarded against by the programmers).  However, of the four wants, one can be locked at any given time.  For wants that take a while to accomplish (like having a baby or ten children), this is obviously key, to make sure the want doesn't disappear by the time it's satisfied.  Funnily enough, Marion had rolled both a want and a fear for having a baby at the same time!  Fortunately the fear had disappeared by the time Mateo appeared.  I think one of the three fears can be locked at a time as well, although I haven't ever used that... I suppose it could be helpful to lock any unlikely fear that comes up.