Before They Were (In)famous - the Class of '00 (May 14)

[MarianT]

13. Toddler Time

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Copperdale is very pretty in the winter.

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Not that Nancy Landgraab had any time to admire the scenery. Heather was fussy. Aggressive, too, and she liked to show her displeasure emphatically.

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But she did enjoy pretending that she was riding on the back of a T-Rex.

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In her spare time, Nancy tried to pick up some money by making flower arrangements. But there wasn't much spare time, and the flowers didn't sell for much.

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On Saturday she was able to do a renovation for the Bjergsons because Geoffrey could stay home from work.

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With three babies about to become infants and then toddlers, Nancy changed Elsa's room into a nursery, and turned Sofia's old room into Elsa's.

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On Sunday, the Watcher turned her attention to Eliza and Mortimer's blended family. Bethany was the daughter of both of them. An inquisitive little girl, she was also a picky eater and a light sleeper, prone to nightmares. She loved books.

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Mortimer's son Theodore was wild and a messy eater. Although a heavy sleeper, he was also an early riser, which was okay with Eliza because she had to get up early too.

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And finally there was Nando, the cheerful son of Mortimer's Selvadoradian girlfriend, the one who disappeared as soon as she moved her children into Mortimer's house. Or rather tent.

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Eliza didn't mind Nando and even tried to help him learn how to ride his bike. Nando was in Scouts and therefore likely to help with cleaning up after his half-brother and adopted sister.

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While Eliza was at work, Mortimer looked after Bethany and Theodore. One day he took the two of them to the park in Oasis Springs. Even though it was cloudy, it was still much warmer there, warm enough that the two of them could play in the water. But food, naps, and baths took priority, so they soon went home.

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Mortimer worked on authenticating artifacts while they slept. And sometimes while they were awake. As long as he put food out, they could take care of themselves, although Eliza complained if she came home to a house where Theodore had been eating.

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"I know I get paid well for authenticating the artifacts that I'm sent," Mortimer told her, "but I have to go out in the field sometimes, too." And with that, he set off for the jungle again.

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It's not easy being an explorer, he wrote. Sometimes it takes a while to find a bush that doesn't have thorns or poisonous sap.

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And sometimes I have to sleep out in the open, under the rain.

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Omiscan stone tiles are not comfortable to sleep on, so my back was killing me whenever I tried to do any excavation.

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And then there were the barriers -- I had to swim along a narrow passage to enter the temple this time.

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And also traps. One of them set me on fire when I guessed wrong. Luckily I packed a fire extinguisher.

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But I found some treasure -- about 12,000 simoleons' worth. I should see you again soon, not long after you get this text, Mortimer wrote. I can't wait.

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Eliza couldn't wait either. She was already planning her welcome, the sort of welcome deserved by someone who went off and left her with two toddlers and a child over the weekend.

[oshizu]

That last screenshot of Eliza preparing her "welcome" for Mortimer made me literally LOL!
You're a brave Watcher to embark on a rotation of infants and toddlers!

[MarianT]

14. Syrup for the Pancakes

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It wasn't really peer group pressure, Sofia told herself. It was just that Bella, and Nancy, and Eliza didn't have anything to talk about except their toddlers and infant. "Hey, it worked!" she told Bob. "He/she/it is kicking right now."

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Nancy, Bella, and Eliza all recommended that she have a baby shower. "That rec center in San Sequoia is supposed to be a good place," they said. Bella was the only one of the three to show up. "Work," said Eliza. "Toddler," said Nancy. But Bella's boyfriend lived at home, so she was able to come.

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Both of Sofia's parents attended, but Clara didn't stay with her. Bob had to leave the shower early to go to work, but Bjorn stayed a while. It was not a very satisfactory party. Sofia received only one present, a squeaky toy. Except for Bob, Bella, and her father, the other guests all wandered off to different rooms in the center, and some total strangers showed up in their place.

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Finally, after what seemed like ages, Sofia went into labor, and Bob went into a panic.

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But he was absolutely delighted when little Vincent gave him his first smile.

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Vincent didn't stay a newborn for long. "I'm going to be a perfect mother," Sofia assured him."I'm not going to be the kind of clumsy person who might drop her baby on his little head. I'm going to be perfect." And with that resolve, she was clumsy no more, but a perfectionist.

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Bob was a little more casual. "We'll just work on our motor skills out here while your mama finishes writing her song, okay?" As long as he wasn't being held, Vincent was okay with anything. He hated being held and barely tolerated it when food was being provided.

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Before Bob and Sofia knew it, Winterfest arrived.

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Bjorn came over with a present for Sofia. "Starter flowers!" she exclaimed. "It's too soon to plant them, but I will when spring comes.

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Bob's present was a yoga mat, but his gift for Sofia was just a note: "Look upstairs."

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There she found "a piano! Oh, how wonderful!" She gasped. "Thank you, thank you!" Bob blushed. "I thought you might like to try writing songs for it as well as the guitar. Those royalties do come in handy."
"Absolutely," said Sofia. "And later I can get a violin and maybe even a pipe organ." Bob didn't know where they would find room, but he'd figure something out.

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But the best present of the day was given to them by Vincent, who laughed for the first time.

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The next day, Sofia took Vincent over to Windenburg to see his grandmother Clara. "I forgot how cold it was here," she said. "I'd better take him home before he turns blue."

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Sofia was in the middle of giving Vincent a bath when her phone rang. "I've been thinking of having another baby," Clara said. "What do you think?" The last time Clara had asked that question, Sofia had answered that the decision was up to her. Clara had promptly given birth to triplets, all boys. "I think Vincent has enough uncles," she said. "Definitely not."

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Now that Vincent could sit up, Sofia decided to find out what food he would like. She made two discoveries: Vincent loved crushed carrots, and he was a messy eater.

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The next morning -- at the crack of dawn because Vincent was also an early riser -- Sofia tried giving him some yogurt. Vincent wasn't sure he liked the yogurt. But with the thick black hair he'd inherited from Bob and her own big blue eyes, Sofia was sure that he would be the most handsome toddler, child, teen, and adult that anyone had ever seen.

[oshizu]

Vincent's such a sweetheart!

[MarianT]

Every infant I've seen has been a sweetheart. And the quirks are amazing.

[MarianT]

From now on, it's just Pancakes. When I cycled back to Bella and little Michael, I found that Michael had lost all but 2 of his infant milestones. Repairing the game didn't restore them, nor did sending them to visit another lot. It's obvious that I can't play rotationally until this bug is fixed. In the meantime, I could either play Nancy and Geoffrey Landgraab, who have a toddler, Heather, or Mortimer and Eliza, who have a child, Ferdinando, and two toddlers, Bethany and Theodore, or the Pancakes. So I marked the other families as unplayed. All the other members of the Class of '00 are still around, and they do come over occasionally.

[MarianT]

15. Only Pancakes

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One day Sofia took Vincent over to meet Bella's little boy Michael. She couldn't help bragging about him a little.

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"One day he wanted to play with his squeaky toy, but I was in the bathroom. He was facing it, so he started crawling, just like that! We thought he would never learn.

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He was so happy when he got it..." Sofia stopped when she noticed that Bella was near tears. "Michael isn't crawling yet?" she asked.
"He's not even sitting up," said Bella. "They say it's some kind of bug."
"Or maybe just temperament," said Sofia. "Vincent's a wiggly infant, and they're supposed to learn their motor skills faster."

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And Vincent was learning quickly. He pulled himself to a standing position, with a little encouragement from Sofia.

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"It's the start of a new year," Bob and Sofia agreed. "He's not going to be our baby much longer."
"Maybe we should have another one," said Sofia.
"Is this a good time?" asked Bob. "They're still talking about possible lay-offs at work. And I've been working so hard that I'm beginning to experience burn-out. If I don't slow down, I'll develop brain block for sure. I could take a vacation, but we can't afford that."
Sofia smiled at him. "If I get pregnant, you'll be able to take some family leave," she said. And a little while later, it wasn't just the television producing fireworks.

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"And don't worry," Sofia added. "If you do lose your job, you'll be able to make plenty of money by selling your robots."

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Time passed quickly. Vincent was pulling himself up whenever he got near anything that was the right height for him to grab.

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He was developing definite opinions about food too. The only finger food he liked was peanut butter puffs. Everything else landed on the floor.

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One night Bob and Sofia were so tired that they forgot about the gremlins and went to bed early. "I'll fix the bathroom," Sofia called. Bob took the kitchen. While he was working, he heard a shout from Sofia.

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They now had a baby girl named Anissa.

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She didn't stay a newborn long. When Bob came home from work with the glad news that the layoff scare had been a false alarm, and he'd been promoted, he found that she had become an infant with the sunny trait. "Life is good," he told her. "You're going to grow up to be just as beautiful, and smart, and talented as your mother."

[Granny Lawlor]

Oh - that's heart-rending for Bella - it's some kind of bug. I remember being a young mum and it's impossible not to compare your baby with their peers. Well done Sofia for noticing she was upset.
Sorry you can't continue the rotational play with the infant issues but I love pancakes. I mean, I love The Pancakes - too! lol

[MarianT]

It really was sad. I'd played with Michael to where he had 10 milestones and was almost ready to sit up, and then came back to him to find that he had born and first smile and nothing else. He'll be fine as a toddler though.

[MarianT]

@JeaanetCricket, Welcome to the Forum! I don't use mods, but there are plenty of challenges here. If you look at https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php?board=85.0, you'll find both tournament and dynasty challenges.

[MarianT]

Oh my goodness! Sofia won the lottery!

[MarianT]

16. The Pancakes Get Flipped

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Sofia couldn't help wondering if Anissa would ever learn to roll over. There was a song she wanted to write. It kept running in her head, but she didn't have time to sound it out on the piano.

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Vincent was a happy infant. He could blow kisses now and wave bye-bye. He had said his first word, which sounded like "penguin," but it might have meant something else.

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At any rate, it was time for him to grow up and become a toddler.

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Toddlerhood opened up all kinds of new experiences. He could play in the water at the park.

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He could give his grandmother Clara a hug when she came over to visit.

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His Aunt Elsa often came over too, but she was more interested in Vincent's toys than in playing with him.

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Vincent didn't mind. He could blow raspberries on his little sister's tummy, which his aunt couldn't do.

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Vincent loved books, and he could occasionally pretend to read one.

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But he was also destructive, which meant that he got scolded sometimes. Somedays it just wasn't worth it getting up in the morning.

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Meanwhile, Anissa was making progress. She could sit up now, and she loved carrots, yogurt, and hummus (but not all at the same time).

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One day -- Wonder Day, actually, because the Flower Bunny was running around -- the lives of the Pancakes were changed forever. "I won the Lottery," Sofia kept saying. She took the family over to Windenberg to visit her parents, but she was too dazed to remember to take any pictures. "I won the Lottery."

Sofia and Bob thought about moving to San Sequoia, to be closer to Bob's company's headquarters, but there weren't any houses with a large enough lot for the tree fort they would want for the children. And there weren't enough good places to fish for Bob. They found a large, or rather huge, house in Brindleton Bay, which they moved into.
"I hope it doesn't rain all the time," Bob remarked.

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But rain was good for the fish, and there was a spot fairly close to the house, although not as close as his fishing hole in Oasis Springs had been.

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They converted one of the many bedrooms upstairs to a nursery for Vincent and Anissa. They would get their own rooms eventually, but for now they shared.

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There was even room for a dollhouse, which Vincent promptly destoyed.

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Sofia hired a nanny, Derrick, and Anissa became friends with him after some initial nervousness. She was a sunny child and loved being held. (Anissa was also a frequent sneezer and a self-soother, which supposedly meant she could fall asleep on her own.)

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Derrick turned out to be good at putting the dollhouse back together.

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Their first visitor was Elsa. Now that she had money to spare, Sofia could get a styling station. She tried giving her some hair, but Elsa said it made her head itch, and she went back to being bald.

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Anissa had plenty of room to practice crawling, but she couldn't move forward just yet.

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She did pull herself up, though, in the crib that Sofia put downstairs.

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With a new grand piano to work on, Sofia was finally able to finish the song that had been stuck in her head all this time. She could even license it, not that they needed the extra money. "I won the Lottery," she couldn't help repeating.

There were so many possibilities. The children could have a puppy when they got older. There was room for her parents and brothers and sisters to come and visit. (Besides Elsa, Sofia had another sister, Larissa, and three brothers, Talon, Leonardo, and Timothy). Vincent could have a tree fort -- they'd already identified a suitable tree. And Bob could take the children fishing in Granite Falls whenever he wanted, without worrying about whether he'd lose his job in the next round of lay-offs.

"But I do wish it would quit raining," Sofia couldn't help saying.

[MarianT]

17. A Move and Two Birthdays

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Brindleton Bay was a lovely town, and their house was a nice house, really.

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Big enough that they could have a dog (Bob had wanted one ever since he'd seen "Lost Dog" on the movie channel). And a cat. And a few more children. But...

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It was raining on Bob's day off, so they held their toddler play date for Vincent and his uncles at the park in Willow Creek.

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"We could have held the party at our own house," Sofia fumed. "We have room enough, and we could certainly afford to get that play area for toddlers. And who wants to get a dog when you have to take it out for walks in the rain?"

Bob couldn't disagree. He was tired of getting wet whenever he went fishing. "Do you want to live in Windenburg?" he asked.

"It's almost as rainy there," said Sofia. "And colder. Let's go back to Oasis Springs. That house Nancy Landgraab was always talking about it still on the market."

"She won't like it if we move in there," said Bob. "She refers to it as her ancestral home. But there's a nice house in the same neighborhood."

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Yuma Heights it was.
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"I'm not a big fan of the decor," said Sofia, "but I do like the grand piano."

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They converted two of the bedrooms upstairs for Vincent and Anissa.

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And even though Sofia preferred mid-century style, she fell in love with the Princess Cordelia bed as soon as she sat down on it. "And there's an en suite bathroom, too," she exclaimed. "We'll take it."

It was too late that day for anyone to celebrate a birthday, so they all went to bed.

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Anissa was up early the next morning, so Bob took her downstairs to blow out her candles. She was a big girl now, able to crawl and eat finger food. She had said her first word, too, "duck."

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There wasn't enough room in her bedroom for a dollhouse, so Bob set up a castle for her in the hall downstairs. Anissa was a charmer now, loving water and wandering but hating to get up.

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He set up his own workshop in the hall upstairs. He and Sofia had agreed to leave the other two bedrooms as guest rooms for the time being.

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Heartrending sobs and crashing noises soon brought Bob downstairs. A marauding knight had destroyed Anissa's castle. "Shame on you," he scolded Vincent.

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To prevent further breakage, he quickly made a birthday cake and put candles on it. It didn't surprise anyone that Vincent turned out to be active.

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The first thing Vincent did was to go outside and practice riding his bicycle.
 
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Early the next morning, which was a Sunday, he went to the park in Oasis Springs to fish with his dad. "We don't have a fishing hole near the house," Bob told him, "but according to legend, there's the entrance to an old mine down the hill from us. Maybe when you get older, you can help me check it out."

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Vincent had school the next day, which was the downside of becoming a child.

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But he got to bring home the drawing he made at school. And he had a table to draw on that he could pretend was a jeep. He also got to know some other children at school and one of them, Theodore Goth, came home with him. Being a child might be fun after all.

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Meanwhile, Sofia had been nominated for a Starlight Accolade because of her song, "Lively 1." The Awards Ceremony was quite thrilling; Sofia had never seen so many celebrities at one time. She sat in back of Thorne Bailey -- the Thorne Bailey. For once, Sofia was happy that she'd done something about her hair and had bought a nice dress from San Myshuno.

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Sadly, the award for music went to someone else. But Sofia didn't mind. Now that the children were getting older, she would have more time to write, and she was sure some future song would get nominated.

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She began composing "Whimsical 1" as soon as she returned home. Even though she worked all night, she wasn't quite able to finish it.

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As she went upstairs, she passed her mother, getting a hug from little Anissa. "That's what's really important," Sofia thought. But a few minutes later, she had another thought. "I bet if I wrote something that made people feel like that hug, it would win an award."

[MarianT]

18. Pancake Progress

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Late spring is a great time to be a toddler who loves water in Oasis Springs. Sofia couldn't help being glad about the move when she saw how much Anissa enjoyed playing in her wading pool.

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The splash pads at Desert Bloom Park were also a big hit.

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While she was there, Anissa spent some time becoming friends with her Aunt Larissa. Anissa is a little older than her aunt, but that doesn't matter.

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Anissa likes being indoors, too. She read her first book upstairs near her parents' bedroom.

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She started learning her numbers in the downstairs hallway.

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And she maxed her imagination in the little tent in her bedroom.

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Vincent has gone from struggling to learn how to ride his bicycle...

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...to showing off. Note the card in his rear wheel that makes a cool flapping noise.

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It took a little dumpster diving, but he finally obtained a voidcritter card -- Simgaia.

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He used it to beat his friend Theodore Goth.

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Theodore is a fairly frequent guest of the Pancakes. When he's not playing with Vincent, he likes to practice on their piano.

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More exciting than the bicycle, and possibly more exciting than being in Scouts, is Vincent's treehouse that his dad helped him build (okay, it was the other way around with Vincent helping Bob, but who cares?).

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Vincent can pretend he's stranded on a desert island, observing the flora and fauna.

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Or he can scan the tropical skies, looking for inhabited planets.

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But Vincent and Anissa aren't the only Pancakes with achievements. Sofia has accomplished her lifelong aspiration to become a musical genius. And when she starts feeling burned out creatively, she relaxes with a jigsaw puzzle.

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As for Bob, he's reached the top of his career as a mechanical engineer. This means he has more time to work on becoming more fit (and perhaps getting rid of that clumsy trait he picked up).

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He also has more time for fishing. Life doesn't get any better.

[Granny Lawlor]

I'm enjoying seeing the Pancakes getting the most our of the Growing Together pack. Nice to see Theodore too.