Well, I've seen my sim talk on the phone while holding a toddler. I think this is a really good idea to clear up some of the frankly just creepy things the townies do with their babies/toddlers, and it would be rather nice if we could use it to take the babies around town too. I realize that babies are supposed to be inconvenient, and a nuisance (joking), but when your baby has 'loves the outdoors' as a trait, there doesn't seem to be much you can do with that until childhood anyway. I mean, you could go ahead and drop them on the ground outside but... it'd be nice to be able to take them to the park or something without having to worry that your sim is going to drop them and go home. I would really like an ep that makes the babies, toddlers and children more fun. Well, basically, one that adds in interactions that makes them actually able to bond with the people around them, including each other.
It doesn't even always have to be good bonding, mean-spirited toddlers could be fighting each other over a toy. Snobs could get jealous that the parents are giving more attention to what's-his-name. If they have the evil trait, they might cry just because someone is sleeping in the room with them and they want to inflict suffering. (not always, just sometimes). If they have the good trait, maybe they'll give up the toy on purpose to Suzie so she can have fun, and enjoy watching her have fun. Or perhaps the good trait would make a toddler (or child) play nicer games with other toddlers (or children).
And if you added in bathing for babies and toddlers again, a hydrophobic parent could simply choose not to, so you're adding another dimension to the traits of the adults...or if the hydrophobic adult decides to do it for the good of her baby...(unlikely, but who knows?) she could bath the child in a way that indicates that she's terrified the water will 'get' the child, drown it or melt it, or something... So, in this way, of adding things for the babies and toddlers to do, you would also be giving us dimensions to our adult sims that are currently not available.
Personally, I want lullabies. I want to be able to make my sim sing in simlish to the baby, to encourage it to go to sleep -before- it's exhausted itself, by laying around in the crib doing nothing... Of course, being that my sim is not a virtuoso (at least the current one), I don't expect that he'll be singing terribly well, he might have to try a few times to sing well enough to get the kid to fall asleep early...and have to be careful putting the baby/toddler down (oh, what's that an opportunity to use the light sleeper, heavy sleeper trait?) so as not to wake him up. If the baby is excitable, you might have to sing to it more, after all, it's all reved up, and wants to stay awake and see everything! If it's a couch potato, you might barely have to sing, it's half way asleep anyway!
In short, I don't just want sims 2, or seeing as I have every single expansion pack of sims 2, I'd have just switched back over to sims 2 and played that. Instead, I want sims 3, to use it's trait system to add interest to an area I think has a fair amount of room to improve. A promising area, an area where we can start to see traits as more than just a moodlet sometimes popping up. We could see the next little person starting to be their own person, while actually interacting with their families. Not every person wants to play catch. Not every person wants to play chess. I do realize that this is a much more complicated game, and I'm asking for a lot, which is why I'm thinking an ep would be nice, even though what I really want is a game patch with this stuff in it. Or items at the store that would add game play. So far the only such items I've seen are laundry, and while I'd love to see say, a pram/stroller and activity blanket and 'comfort blanket' (assuming the lullabies need to be added with an item if they are being added at the store), I figure what I'm asking for is deeper than a few items at the store. I'm asking for the developers to take a good hard look at three stages and pretend that they were the important stages in the game.
Pretend, just for this expansion that you were dealing with people who only had adults around to have children, (even though we know that's not how it works), so, you wanted to make the babies, toddlers and children able to use their traits, and be able to interact with each other in some manner. Toddlers could hug, kids could cuddle baby/toddler, toddlers who could talk could talk to children, other toddlers that could talk, that sort of thing. They could make faces at each other. Patty cake, peekaboo, dolls, puppets, something. 'I've got your nose', Little piggies, nursery rhymes, or something. Playing horsey, something. Toddlers could play in the dirt outside, or sand at the beaches. You don't have to make a new neighborhood, just add more to our game for these three age groups. You could make an imaginary friend, if you wanted a 'creature'. Sort of like Drop Dead Fred, or you could bring back the social bunny as a child's imaginary friend, if you wanted to use something nostalgic.
Now, I'm not saying I don't want the kids to be able to interact with the other age groups, I really think more interaction overall would be very nice, but, firstly, I think one of the things that makes them so boring is that they are isolated, they don't interact with the others (babies are alarmclock/dolls basically), and if they did, it would be a vast improvement.
