Chapter Eight: Patience

Now that Phoenix was a toddler he was becoming more independent, able to do things like feed himself without Rachel's help.

In other areas, though, he needed more help than ever.

Sometimes now he would sleep through the whole night and in the morning mother and son would enjoy breakfast happily together.

Other nights weren't so great and Rachel would find herself starting her morning resentful of having to do so much all on her own.

After one particularly long, stressful day at work, Rachel called up Jarod to ask if he would stay a little longer so she could stop by the gym.

It was the first time she had practiced since her return from China, and it felt so good to blow off some steam. Rachel decided that she and Phoenix would both be better off if she took more time for herself, so she started to get back in the habit of visiting the gym for a couple hours after work each day.

After that, by the time she got home after her training sessions, she would be in a much better mood and able to devote her full attention to her son.

Her improved disposition from the exercise payed off in more ways than one, as soon after she established her new routine she was awarded a promotion to Patrol Officer. She decided to skip the gym that day and head home to celebrate with Phoenix, stopping at the store on the way home to pick up some presents for him with her bonus.

"This is a panda, Phoenix. Pandas live in China, like your Daddy."

"Panna!"

"That's right, panda!"

Now, that's more like it, Rachel thought when a patrol car came to pick her up the next morning. She was still far from the lab, but at least she would be working on actual cases now, and not herding vehicles and pedestrians through the streets.

Unfortunately, Jarod wasn't there to see her off to her first day at her new job. He had passed away during the night and the agency had sent Kesha Linton to replace him. Phoenix seemed to warm up to his new sitter easily enough, but Rachel was sad to have lost her only friend outside of work.

When she got home that evening, Rachel was happy to hear from Kesha that Phoenix seemed to be enjoying the books on counting and numbers that she had bought him. She was sure that this was proof that he would grow up to be just as clever and logical as his mother. She also thought that this might mean that he was old enough to start understanding more about his father.

"So he's in China right now, but as soon as he gets the letter I wrote him, I know he'll come to meet you," Rachel wasn't entirely certain whether she was saying that more for Phoenix's benefit or her own.

"Panna!" was her son's thoughts on the matter.

"Yes, pandas are in China too."

Maybe he wasn't quite ready yet, after all.

Rachel's promotion came with increased responsibility, and she found herself having to spend more and more of her personal time devoted to work. It was hard to concentrate on writing her reports when she could hear Phoenix playing all by himself behind her.

Worse were the days she had to go snooping around the bad parts of the neighborhood to gather intel for current cases. This was definitely not how she wanted to be spending her weekend.

The trade off, of course, was the bigger paycheck.

Finally, Rachel was able save up enough money to build Phoenix his own room. It was a good thing, too, as he was going to be starting school soon and no kid would want their friends to find out that they still shared a room with their mom.

Phoenix had a little trouble settling down in his new surroundings that night, so Rachel stayed in the room with him, singing the song his father had taught her, until he fell asleep.

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This was kind of a simple chapter. The picture count is about the same as most of my other chapters, but I think I wrote less. I kept putting off playing through this since not much was really going on during Phoenix's toddler stage and I was stressing about how I was going to make it into a story. I worry about that almost every chapter, though, and always end up surprising myself. Still, hopefully things will get easier once he's a child and can start actually doing things, it's hard to keep things interesting when your only sim is a workaholic loner. xD

I forgot to mention last time that Phoenix's traits are Brave and Good, and his favorites are Roots, Pink, and Fruit Parfait. You might have noticed that he changed his look halfway through this chapter, that's because I like to give kids makeovers in the middle of their life stage in order to simulate a more gradual aging process.