I totally agree with you, LittleMissSims. We really can't expect everything to make it to the base game and should look forward to what is coming that will make the game better overall. We had the same problem moving from 2/3. It's not like they're really recreating the same game, but modernizing it and capitalizing on the evolving power of the PC to provide richer gameplay. Every one of them is quite different in pacing and goals, as well. I look forward to the base game and everything that will be added to it over the next few years. It seems like a really nice platform, and I'm sure it's going to have enough features to be quite fun to play as it is. In fact, I kind of look forward to not having all the lag that has occurred when you have 11 Expansions and several stuff packs installed all at once. I have a good PC, and it takes everything it has to play TS3 as it stands now. Neighborhoods will probably fix that issue and make adding additional Expansions not such a big deal.
Some people complain about the Expansion cycle, but they don't have to buy them and to be honest about gaming, some games I have paid $60 for and played all of 40 hours. The Sims offers at minimum hundreds, but possibly thousands of hours of gameplay. I know of people who are playing free-to-play games who drop hundreds of dollars just to be the best. At least Sims isn't competitive. It's modular and lets us add features to it as we see fit. I just want little things to be fixed faster - like the gym bug not being fixed for a few years. That was inexcusable, but I myself thought my Sims were gaining faster from the moodlet..
As for Toddlers, it's not really clear how that plays out, so it doesn't worry me. But then, some of us are not playing for raising a family and all. That's something I love about the game, that there are so many different playstyles. Childhood was a deeper as far as gameplay went in TS3, so perhaps that stage will be drawn out some.
I myself do question the loss of pools - it's really weird, as it's just some animations and probably not that taxing on them to make it a part of gameplay. Still, it was a long time before a Sim could swim in anything else but a pool (ocean) and they're sure to bring it back in an improved form.