2.9 Part One: Changes

Third Person View

Spring brought with it a lot of rain and cold to the Holmberg household.

As the snow drifted away, the children started looking forward to warmer weather with lots of fun in the sun. It also welcomed birthdays as Aidan, Elle, Terrance and Camille all grew up together.

Aidan:

Terrance:

Elle:

Camille:

As they were all busy with work, school and after school activities they forgot most of the birthdays so they grew up individually by themselves.

Marwan started fixing all the houses appliances and plumbings, that broke now and then.

He was getting pretty good at it too. Camille called him her handyman. They were still very much in love, and they were planning on having another baby sometime soon.
They hoped it would be a girl this time so it would even out all the boys. Also Marwan really wished for his own little princess. He adored Elle, but he would never be her real father by blood.
By having another baby they would need to rebuild the house, as there just weren't enough rooms. Or, as Marwan had suggested, they could make the basement bigger. But Camille did not like that idea.
We can't have a child living in a basement!, she said.
Well i did that when i was a child, Marwan protested.
It is the end of the discussion, Camille said stubbornly. There will not be more basement talk, and that is final. Now let's focus on bringing home some money for the new house.
Marwan ended up agreeing with Camille, though he wasn't happy about it. But he knew that when it came to the children's safety, she would not budge. Though he couldn't see how living in a basement could be seen as not safe. He lived in a basement as a child and he hadn't taken any damage from it.
He started taking extra shifts at the police station and soon promotion after promotion rolled in along with the money. Camille was also doing fine on her job, though she wasn't moving forward as fast as she would have liked. She didn't want to stay on the same payroll if she was going to be pregnant soon. She wanted a higher maternity leave pay. So she worked her butt off, and soon she got a promotion as well.

Camille's Pov

On love day we all had the day off work and school.We went to the Spring Festival to enjoy ourselves, but was met with heavy rain, so it kind of overshadowed the whole day. But we did get to take a greeting card, though.

And Marwan took home a few prices on the machine with the claw where you gather prices.

He was so lucky to pick up a Star Cut Soulpeace worth 7.036 sim. and a Money Bag worth 6.726 sim! This will definitely give us a boost in our savings when we sell it! I can't wait to rebuild our house! We already had temporary blueprints of it.

It would be something like that. Though we weren't too sure about the large empty rooms, but there could be a home gym and a hobby room and an extra bedroom/nursery. It could still change though so we aren't too focused on this yet.

Not long after, Terrance grew into a child.

His toddler years were over and i started longing for another child.
"Don't you think we are getting too old for having more babies?" Marwan expressed himself one day when i asked about the matter. "I mean, neither of us are getting any younger, and it feels like the older we get the more it demands of us."
"I am not too old to have a child!" I stormed off in tears.
I could hear him coming after me. "Honey!" he called out to me. He caught up with me in our bedroom. "Honey, listen, i'm not saying we can't have another child, i'm just saying it will be demanding more. Are we really ready for that? I like our life as it is now," he sat down on the bed beside me and held my hand while tears were running down my cheeks. "I'm a little older than you, and i start to feel like i need the quiet and to just relax. A new baby would not give me that. Wouldn't you agree we need some quiet now? Elle is soon going to grow up into a young adult in a couple of years. Then she will be moving out and we have only the boys to think about."
"I still haven't decided who should continue my legacy." I said, trying to stop the tears. Why was i so hormonal? "I just want my children around me. They are all that matter!"
"Don't i matter as well?" Oh no, he sounded sad.
"Of course you matter sweetheart." I raised my head to level with him, looking into his eyes i felt a sharp emotional pain in my heart. "But i need this. I need another baby, hopefully a girl. You always said you wanted a little princess of your own," I tried manipulating him a bit. Did it work?
He was thinking, i could tell because his brows frowned and he did this weird, cute little thing with his mouth.
"Okay, how about this. We make another baby, but if it's a boy he's all your responsibility." He said looking very seriously. I looked at him disbelief, until he started laughing. "I'm sorry," he chuckled. "Of course we can have another child. I don't care if it is a boy or a girl, black or white.... or wait, actually i prefer it to be white," he winked at me. "I would be kind of weird it was a black kid when we are both white, don't you think?" he added when i looked at him like he was mad. We laughed together and started trying immediately when all the kids were asleep.

One day the dishwasher broke. Marwan insisted on fixing it. He was getting pretty handy with these things, so he said "It's no problem" and got right to it. Unfortunately he didn't think it would be a good idea to mop the water beforehand and he was electrocuted. We all heard his screams and ran to the kitchen to find him on the floor with electricity running through him.

We didn't dare touching him. We screamed at him asking him if he was okay. This could not be happening!
But it was. He was gone. Death had taken my beloved Marwan. My true love.

We threw away the dishwasher immediately the next day and I swore to never buy another one. Elle, who was not as close to Marwan as the rest of us, mopped the water off the floor.

Out of the kids, Aidan seemed to take the death of his father the hardest. At night he would wake up from his sleep screaming his head off, convinced he saw The Grim Reaper standing in front of him.
He kept checking under my bed for monsters and would stubbornly insist that he saw them, saying if i kept sleeping in it, the monsters would come out and take me. 
Though one thing all my children agreed on was that we had to move. The sooner the better. They didn't want to live in a house they considered evil. So, instead of rebuilding the house as Marwan and I had first decided, I was now looking at new houses around the neighborhood. I took Rie with me on house hunting, while Elle watched the children. She insisted she could handle it. She was 16 now, so i thought she would be old enough to take on the responsibility.
She took extra care of Aidan, after my order.

Terrance on the other hand kept to himself. He would often be in the tree house, not allowing anyone inside, even Aidan.

When i asked him about it, he said he just wanted to be left alone to his thoughts.

A week after Marwan's death it was Aidan's birthday. None of us wanted a party, so we celebrated just us four.

Afterwards Aidan went to the stylist in town and got a makeover.

That was much more his style. I didn't approve of it because it was all black and depressing, but he insisted on having this so i couldn't say no.
I started seeing streaks of insanity in him. He would ramble on about nonsense. His siblings laughed at him, saying he was crazy, but i knew something wasn't right. I was sure his father's death was the cause of this. I just didn't know what to do. He wouldn't talk to me about his problems. When i asked about it, he would just deny something was wrong and smile an insane smile to me. I knew i needed help, but was the hospital the right way? It seemed so extreme to me, but maybe it was the only way.
Sometimes he rambled on about how the world was out to get him. He had no friends in school. I knew this because Elle would talk about how the other kids teased him about being different than them and him wearing all black clothes. It wasn't normal. Where had my sweet little innocent child gone?