Re: Why is everyone wearing a brown paper bag?
You almost certainly have the We Wear Bags and Sharing is Caring NAPs active. You can turn off NPC voting but the NAPs will remain active until repealed.
(If you're willing to cheat, you can enable testing cheats, shift-click on a mailbox, and Instant Repeal the NAP that way.)
As for the toddlers and dollhouses, yeah, um, there's been an issue with Sims dropping things from their queue lately, I think, but yeah, make sure the toddler didn't get tired of what the adult was trying to do.
