Aye Carumba! The family I played last night had TWIN babies that both refused to grow up! The family was trying to Help with Birthday, but I wanted *cake*, so I canceled it, bought two Birthday Cakes, and had family members Bring to Cake.

The relavent family member brought the baby to the cake, blew out the candels, set the baby on the floor, and helped herself to a piece of cake, and the baby lay there crying about the soiled diaper, unaged.

The family was going through some hard times, because I had them plant crops too early in the season and overextended their budget trying to build a greenhouse while having the Master Gardeners [two Adults [one a PlantSim] and twin Teens] talk to the plants [to keep them from dying] while trying to get as much money as they could [everyone is unemployed/self-employed, but they do NOT own a business; they had money trees, and "sold" robots and paintings and stuff they dug up] without going into Needs Failure themselves. Aspiration Failure wasn`t an issue, though, as they`re all four PermaPlat.

They saved the garden, but the Money Trees died of neglect.

Anyway, I eventually turned on the Testing Cheats, used the debugging menus to make the infants selectable, then told them to Grow Up.

I had to tell them to Grow Up at *least* twice each! The action kept dropping out of the queue. Eventually, though, someone came and tossed them into the cloud of sparkles that finally deigned to materialize.

Later on, I managed to turn the second Adult into a PlantSim as well, and replaced the two dead money trees with about six new ones.

This same house has had some other oddities, as well. The twin Teens? Well, the girl aged up fine last time I played them, but her twin brother was left a bastard hybrid between Child and Teen, as he was a fully-functional Teen in all respects EXCEPT those that depend upon having an Aspiration other than Grow Up. That`s right, when he aged into Teenhood, the Aspiration selector pop up pooped out instead. [It showed up for her, but never for him.] I fixed it yesterday by buying the Aspiration Changer reward and changing his aspiration TWICE. [The first time, it backfired and turned him into a Grilled Cheese Sim, despite being at Platinum Lifetime Aspiration!]

As if THAT isn`t bad enough, the middle twins aren`t twins any more! One Grew Up from Toddler to Chile autonomously [sans cake-help] while the other mysteriously still had a whole WEEK on her life-meter! [That`s right, seven days.] I have no idea what delayed her development; as far as I know, the first one grew up right on schedule, and Toddlers cannot drink the Elixir of Life.

Any ideas, people?

Well, I'd say the family had a major glitch embedded in their coding, which caused all the above problems. But the toddler problems have happened to me before. Not sure about the bastard hybrid twin boy though. But the Aspiration thing happened to me, too. I think the pop-up bock came up when he became an adult. Weird, huh? And the failure to change his Aspiration the first time even with Platinum is normal. It could've failed because his needs were too low.

I must be weird because, for me, it's the cakes that hardly ever work right. When I first started playing, I wanted to have the cutesy birthday parties. The party would all be going swell...until it was cake time. Parent brings kid to cake, guests do the noisemaker thing, parent blows out candles...and nothing happens! Birthday party tanks due to birthday fail and Popularity parents go loony. Lather, rinse, repeat, break things.

On the other hand, so long as the kid's out of its crib, when about 6:17PM rolls around on aging day, a parent or teen sibling comes around, picks up the kid, age transition happens, all is well, and I am happy...and then I promptly InSim the kid directly to child because I have come to loathe the toddler stage with a burning passion that not even the flames of hell can rival. Especially if it's twins. I like babies, though! So easy! And they don't do that annoying screech! I have a notion to make the baby stage longer to compensate for the complete lack of toddlerhood...

Well, Elizabeth, the family consists entirely of born-in-game descentants of former Townies [except for the mom, who is a former Townie herself] on a custom-built lot I downloaded from MTS2, so I doubt that the lot or the family has any special coding for that, but it could well be "glitched" in other ways. As for the motives, they were even lower when it worked than when it failed, so *that* doesn`t seem likely. I figured it was because he had an *invalid* Aspiration when I stuck his head in there. At any rate it *did* repair the damage, even if it didn`t repair what *caused* the damage.

You say that "the toddler problems" have happened to you before? Are you referring to the de-twinning of the middle twins?

iCad, that`s one reason I seldom have Birthday *Parties* for my Sims. I go for the celebration without the scoring of the formal party, and if it tanks, it doesn`t take anything else down with it. On the other hand, while Toddlers can be a handfull *each*, they`re unbearably *cute*, and I`m running with a hack that doubles *all* lifespan durations *except* infant.

I`ve found an interesting trick for dealing with Infants and Toddlers, however. PlantSims make *excelent* parents as well as Master Gardeners. The Adults in the family I played last night [headed by the previous family`s Dad`s twin brother] also are both PlantSims, and for the first time, I noticed what happens to *other* Sims when a PlantSim emits Spores of Happiness.

Cheat to make an Infant selectable, just so you can SEE what is happening. [Trust me, it works even when you can`t see it, but the effects, though significant, are subtle.] Then make your PlantSim Adult go over to the Infant, emit Spores of Happiness, and Hold the Infant. Then select the infant and watch what happens in the information panel. You can take your Infant all the way through to Toddlerhood without ever caring for it once, and still have it in a bright green mood. I haven`t tried it yet, but I bet you could sustain Toddlers and Children the same way, and maybe even Teens. Two PlantSim Adults could probably sustain each other through the night without sunlamps, too, and with three, it`s almost guaranteed.

...and it doesn`t cost ANYthing!

All my Sims' babies --and they have lot of twins-- have no problem with age transition or their parties. One phone call for B-day party, two cakes and they are all happy. The only time I had problems was when once the baby peed himself while his mother was blowing the cake candles, and for some reason that stopped his transition into a toddler, till his diaper was changed. Weird, isn't it?

The adults is another story though. Yesterday one of my Sims arranged a party to welcome her elder years and while everything run smoothly and the meter was up to "Good time" I sent her to blow the candles. Did she go? No. She stopped mid-way and started chatting with one of her guests. The time passed, she grew into an elder without blowing the candles, after a while the guests left, the party outcome was "complete dull" and she went into aspiration failure which cost her one or two Sim days. It served her right!

I got a little hint somewhere about aging up babies:

Do not have anything at all in front of the crib when the "help with birthday" script is on.
That means: no lights, nothing. The front spaces of the crib should be absolutely empty of anything that could block the animations of the change.

I, too, have had the problem, but once I saw this fix, I started making sure the front of the crib and around it is absolutely clear of objects.

It works.

Ah, yes. I was trying to teach one of the toddlers to talk (an interaction I LOATHE), but it was their birthday, so I was trying to go really fast, but one of the Toddlers grew up even though the other didn't. It took three more days for Toddler 2 to grow up to a kid. No more twins.

The only times I have trouble aging babies to todlers, and I always use cakes, is when the baby happens to soil it's diaper right then, and they tend to do that a lot in my game when I have a set of twins.. I've had to use 2, sometimes 3 cakes on the same baby because of this, but in the end they all aged well.

Thank you, ElizabethTerry, for the clarification.

...but honestly, SEVEN DAYS on the meter when the other has already grown up? C`mon, _that_ is *seriously weird* [even *with* my Double Life Span mod!]. The younger of the two still hadn`t grown up when I had to quit for the night, so they`ll stay mismatched until next time I play them. ::shrug::