The self-sufficient toddler or Parenting made easy in the Sims 2

Are you tired of constantly taking care of your little one´s needs? Worry no more, I have gathered a list of items and mods that make baby- and toddler-raising even easier than it already is in the Sims 2 (and I know what I am talking about, I raised twins in RL).

Some basic observation first: Your toddler is selectable! Yes, indeed, you can click on your toddler´s icon and tell him or her to do certain things, like staying away from the cat food.

When I first started playing, I was not aware of this wonderful feature, and became really desperate when Cassandra Goth had her first child, and it would not stop splashing in the toilet.

Feeding

I never understood why Sims didn´t throw away the empty feeding bottles, but dropped them on the floor. TwoJeffs at Simbology invented the Self Exploding Bottles and a few other useful mods for baby care.

An alternative version would be Inge´s Bottomless Bottle at Simlogical.

I have no experiences with that, though.

Recently I discovered Beck´s Toddler Eating Table and Beck´s Toddler PicnicTableNChair.

Toddlers use it autonomously when they are hungry and also gain cooking skills. I noticed though that lazy toddlers rather like to starve then use it, so you have to check on them once in a while and direct them to eat.


Children are able to bake muffins in the Rip Co. Little Baker Oven which comes with the base game, and will do so once they are hungry. When they have used Beck´s Toddler Eating Table before and thus gained a few cooking points, the muffins will not be burnt and quite filling.

Potty
Toddler Potty Fix by TwoJeffs: Maids clean the potties, and adults can train toddlers if the potty is dirty. This only works on Maxis potties, as far as I am aware.



Sleeping

Really useful for babies are two other mods by Inge Jones:

Crib Fix - "This is for the problem of parents and nannies getting babies and toddlers out of one crib only to place them in another" and Toddlers sleep though the night patch. There is a whole bunch of other child-related mods on her page, too.


Another must have object is HugeLunatic´s Toddler Blanket Bed. Toddlers use it autonomously when they are tired, so no more "put toddler in crib" - "take toddler out of the crib" hassle. I delete my cribs as soon as baby has aged up, and place the blanket in the nursery. The animations are very cute, too.

Hygiene

A real god-send are xptl297´s Bathable Fountains, unless you decide to use TwoJeff´s "No playing with the toilet fix". Toddlers and children use the fountains autonomously after they have set the bathroom under water, or their hygiene has become low generally.

Others

A great toy is the Bits o Wood Garage by leefish, it builds mechanic skill and raises fun.

Two very useful mods that make child raising in Sims 2 much more enjoyable:

Infant & Toddler - No Puke Global Mod by Rebecah and Cuddle Infant - Comfort, Fun & Higher Relationship

These mods stop babies from puking on you when you play with them, and raise the adult´s comfort and fun meter during cuddling.


If you need more stuff for your offspring, a huge list of child-related objects can be found at the MTS Sims Wiki.

I hope you enjoyed this compilation. It is by no way complete, but these are the mods and items I use in my different hoods, and they work really well.

Gilbert Jacquet

When Gilbert passed by Jonah Powers´ house and made friends with him, I was reminded how much I adore him, so I decided he will be the next person in my neighborhood I want to introduce.

He is another pre-made character from the game, he came with the Open for Business Expansion. He lived with his mother (sic!) Denise:

Source: Wiki

I completely ignored this pre-made town for quite a while because I was really having issues with the game crashing over and over again, especially when I tried to load the Universities or Bluewater Village. After lots and lots of researching I found out this is due to a Mac-specific problem of allowing only a certain amount of files loaded with any program, known as the File Limit Problem. Since I have 6 GB of custom content in my game, this was really causing the problem. I found this uber-cool tutorial on how to fix it, and since then my game has been running totally smoothly, except a crash here and there with a camera mod.

When I started opening businesses in Sims 2, after a while I noticed these annoying customers always dropping in and buying nothing, telling the shop-owner they did not have any money. When trying to make-over these characters, I could never find them under "Townies" or "Downtonies". I then suddenly realized these were existing characters, and went to check them out.

Yeah, Gilbert living with his terrible mother Denise. I found her incredibly annoying. She was always involved in fights in my shops, causing the customer happiness to drop. I don´t know who started it, probably my bad boy Ontario, but these two really kept picking at each other, and it was only getting worse over time.

I mean, look at him. Does he look like someone who causes trouble anywhere?

He sure does :-) After I started paying more attention to my Sim´s personalities, I realized he only has two nice points, so this might explain why he has so many enemies. When someone looked through the telescope during daytime, it was Ontario who came running after him to beat him up. Now I have a mod that prevents this, Ontario is married and has calmed down a bit :-)

This is the other Sim I mentioned earlier who on one day had this funny blue glow around him.

Anyway, Denise was really bugging me, and it didn´t help that she also was buggy for some reason, causing the jumping bug etc. And, come on, a grown-up man still living with his nagging old mother?

Source: Wiki

Gilbert quickly received a make-over, and Denise was thrown out of the house and deleted from the bin. A bad thing, because it still leaves a lot of character files dangling around in the background of the game, but I only learned that later.

Playing Gilbert became a bit boring, and I was ready to leave him until I caught him like this:

Wow, that puppy-eyed look surely touched my heart! There he was, sitting alone in this ugly old-fashioned kitchen, being all by himself after I had thrown out his mother, giving me THAT look. Yeah, my Sims still surprise me :-) Of course, I could not abandon him after that. Instead, I spent the good deal of a day redecorating his house and turning it into a little dollhouse :-)

I remember now why I thought he was shy and lonely :-) Just reading the Wiki, I realize he is just sloppy and lazy, but has seven points for outgoing. Duh! This explains a lot!

Here is the dollhouse:

Judging from the flower bouquets, I think he was a Romance Sim in the beginning. Not really sure.

He dated Carl "Carla" Richter, Richard Adams and Cissy Trussard, but no "coupling" felt really right. His latest crush is Jeremiah.

I tried to run the J´ Adore Bakery he owned, but found it very tedious. I thought a Servo might help with the cooking, and thus Kira got created. She is using Sherabim´s totally stunning Steampunk Robot Set, and there is a default replacement set by Amaryll on Garden of Shadows.



She looks as if to say: What have I gotten myself into? :-)

She is a true beauty:

She developed a crush on Aristides Richter, Carl "Carla" Richter´s Servo. But only after a long struggle to stop her from making out with Gilbert. Since the Sim who initiates the Servo transfers his personality onto him or her, Servos and their respective masters are the perfect match for each other and always share three bolts in chemistry. Which creates some funny situations if you don´t watch :-)

Latest addition to the household is Azrael Whatshislastnameagain:

All my Servos love pets, especially stray ones. In the long hours of the night, they have nothing else to do and start picking up stray pets and train them. At least mine do :-) Klinny has made these adorable wings for pets, and some more cute pet-related stuff.

Jeremiah (with the Bodybuilder mesh) feels a little out of place and too big for this small dollhouse. Well, sometimes a couple just does not work for me, and I am afraid Jeremiah/Gilbert fall into this category.