As I created a new family to play and placed them in a house, it was the parents, a toddler girl and a dog. The game crashed and after restarting there were only the two adult sims. The toddler and the dog were gone and as in your case, just "subject" in the memories.
I didn't care much, adopted a dog and started playing without the toddler - so they could focus on their career before getting parents. But it turned out, my sim can't get pregnant. I had to adopt a child.
I really love Sims 2 and the nostalgia, but the amount of bugs is really annoying (not to mention, I had to restart the game round about 30x yesterday, because it keeps crashing from time to time). 😒
