2.36: Babying

Written by CitizenErased14

Things have been absolutely insane around here lately.

Amazing too, of course. I don’t think anything could have prepared me for how incredible it is to be a grandfather. Seriously. I love those boys just as much as I love my girls. And I never thought I could love anything that much again, you know?

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But they’re definitely a handful.

I mean, Jade and I managed to raise our three girls just fine on our own… But two babies at the same time? Definitely a bit more than we bargained for.

And it’d sure be nice if Mari were actually around to help more.

She went back to work as soon as she could after the boys were born. Which sounds great, in theory…

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But that means the bulk of the work is falling on Jade and I. We’ve been taking turns working from home as much as we can so we can look after the babies during the day. But it’s a Hell of a lot to handle.

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Gabriela’s been trying her best to help as much as she can too, as soon as she gets home from school. And even if she can’t do too much yet, she’s so good with them… It’s really nice to see, you know?

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But when Mari comes home… She barely does anything, really. Hides up in her bedroom mostly… Jade and I practically have to beg to get her to come out and help. And then, as soon as the boys are asleep, she’s gone – Off going who-knows-where and doing, well… Probably doing what got her into all of this in the first place.

We’ve tried everything. We’ve cried, we’ve yelled, we’ve begged… Everything we can think of to convince her to help more. But, as always, nothing ever gets through to her. Nothing changes. And we’re both getting so tired.

Lina barely even comes over anymore. It always turns into another fight, if you can believe it. Lina’s never been quick to anger. Not like her sister is. But I guess this is really bothering her… She keeps saying we’re “babying” Mari, and that she refuses to have any part in it. Claims we’re… What was the word she used? “Enabling” her.

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And yeah, maybe she has a bit of a point… But what the Hell else are we supposed to do? Drag her out of her bedroom and force her to change a diaper? Lock her in the house to keep her from going out every night? Kick her out on the streets until she gets her act together?

That’s our daughter. Those are our grandchildren.

We can’t.

We just can’t.

But what else can we do?

 

66 thoughts on “2.36: Babying”

  1. Well, I honestly have no idea. Maybe you should give her a star-chart or something… Change one diaper, get a star. After 20 stars, let her go out for the night. I dunno, but, it sounds like we need Team #SlapMari, or whatever it’s called! (I honestly can’t remember… Oops!) But I refuse to lose my positivity. Although, DOESN’T SHE UNDERSTAND SHE NEEDS TO LOVE HER BABIES ELSE THEY’LL GROW UP WITH ISSUES BECAUSE OF NEGLECT? (That’s strangely pessimistic coming from me)
    So, I’ll try again.
    I’m so happy that Gabriella love her nephews so much! They’ll love having a big aunty!
    Oh, well. I can’t wait for the next chapter, and my curiosity was quelled. They’re both boys, right?

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  2. Lina is right! They are enabling Mari and they need to put their foot down. Because Mari knows her parents are taking care of her babies then she will never feel the need to do more. They need to leave those babies alone when Mari gets home to let her realise that when she’s home she HAS to be a mother and put the twins’ needs first otherwise she will keep being selfish and wallowing in self-pity.
    All she does is put herself first. She doesn’t care about anyone else and apparently not about her own children. So Diego cheated on you and you decide to go out and sleep with a bunch of men to get over him because you’re hurt. Then you keep on sleeping with more men because you feel bad about sleeping with so many men. You get pregnant by lord knows who, have two boys who need a mother but then you pass off the responsibility on to your family because you don’t feel worthy or you’re depressed about your situation or whatever your excuse of the week is. JUST SUCK IT UP MARI!!! Be a grown up already!
    I’m sorry for ranting but Mari is really frustrating me right now. At this point, I no longer feel bad for her because she doesn’t realise how good she has it. She seriously needs a wake up call and fast.

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    1. I knew people would not be happy about this one hahaha. Mari is essentially mentally ill. She doesn’t think rationally. She has a twisted view of reality and of her situation. Doesn’t excuse what she’s doing, but it’s the reason behind it. She does need a wake up call for sure. But it makes me sad because this is the second comment accusing her of not loving her babies, so I can’t help but get a little defensive there haha. She loves them more than she loves anything else. But because of her twisted view of herself, she’s acting this way. She talks about it in the next two chapters.

      I hope someone out there still has a shred of sympathy for Mari haha. She needs help really badly.

      Thank you for reading! I hope that I can help change your (and most others’!) opinion of Mari eventually 😛

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        1. LOL! I doubt it. I think I’m the only one who will ever love her again XD and I will have to live with that. I made her too unlikeable. There’s no hope now!

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  3. I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Mari and hoped being pregnant would be a wake up call and she would begin to understand the unconditional love a child has for their parents and try to become worthy of it. Apparently not. Her family needs to schedule an intervention before she loses everything and it is too late. 😳

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    1. Mari wants to be worthy of it. But she feels like she can’t. She’s not emotionally stable and needs help, unfortunately!

      I understand everyone’s frustration with her though. I’m frustrated too!

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  4. They definitely aren’t doing it consciously. It’s like Alex said — they don’t know what else they can do. They’re kind of “stuck”.

    Clearly something has to happen to snap Mari out of this though. It’s so easy to say she just needs to suck it up and get her shit together, but that’s so much easier said than done for someone in her mental state. Now the question is — what needs to happen that will be enough to change her? *dun-dun-dunnnn* haha

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  5. I was just thinking. If Alex and Jade were elders and died and left Mari with the babies alone. What would that plum girl do? Let them starve? Better send the social worker to take them away from her, really. Or, there’s a nice new orphanage in my legacy story, we can put them there and my heir would probably adopt them. End of the story. 😀

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    1. If she had no one else to rely on, she’d step it up and do what’s right for them. Like Lina said, Alex and Jade are unintentionally enabling her right now.

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  6. All these comments about how Mari doesn’t love her kids. I do think she needs some tough love right now, but I don’t think the answer is taking the twins away. She needs really serious help. We just saw in the chapter where they were born that she loves her babies. What Mari needs is an intervention, parents who aren’t push overs, and a really good psychologist.

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    2. Push-over parents are definitely a large part of it. That’s what I’ve been saying! Lina is completely right about them being enablers. Alex never listens to me LOL. Does he even know I’m still in his club? :-p

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        1. YES! That’s my whole beef with them! This hands-off approach has NEVER worked for them, yet they keep trying it. Ok, yeah, they say they tried “everything,” but clearly there are things they haven’t tried. Like tough love!

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          1. Heck, even just love! At this point, I feel like Mari might break and tell them everything if they just take turns hugging her for a while. She obviously feels she doesn’t deserve love.

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            1. YEEEESSS!! I think I’ve said this in all of my comments since she’s been like this lol. All I really want is to see Alex completely disregard all the crap that comes out of Mari’s mouth, all the fighting she does when they try to help and just barge into her room and wrap his arms around her. That’s all I want! She really needs that! And I know she feels like she doesn’t deserve it, but that’s all the more reason to do it. I mean, it’s no wonder she’s annoyed by her parents. They don’t really show her love like that (although Amanda says they hug her off screen LOL).

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              1. LOL at your last comment XD Um, fun fact — one of my biggest annoyances with Ts4 is that everyone smiles like an idiot when they hug. There’s no option for a sad or emotional hug.

                I’m not saying that’s the reason we haven’t seen them hug or anything, I’m just saying that there have been multiple times that I’ve wanted to show a hug in this story, but can’t because the characters would be crying, not smiling hahaha

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              2. YES this, so much. I feel like Mari could already be a much healthier person if Alex would just stop making excuses and hug her. My friend fosters kittens, and she has a saying, “hissy kitties get cuddles.” That is just what Alex should do. The more Mari yells, the more he needs to show her how much he loves her.

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      2. This is so true. I think the hardest part is that Alex and Jade are genuinely well-intentioned. In a way, it’s almost like they’re TOO nice. Mari needs some seriously tough love. But Alex and Jade just don’t have the heart, y’know?

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  7. I don’t know. What’s more of a wake up call than having twin babies? She reminds me of the girls on teen mom. Except she is so older and should know better. She’s acting like she still a pouty child. I could go easy on her while she was only harming harming herself, but I have very little patience for selfish people.

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    1. If she’s not careful with all this selfishness, Mari will end up haunting a little boy’s backyard… XD (see what I did there?)

      No but seriously, she is being pretty selfish right now. But she thinks she’s doing the right thing. You’ll get a little insight into her twisted logic soon haha

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      1. Oh yeah I bet she thinks she doing them a favour by not being in their lives ir some such. Doesn’t change the fact she’s making her parents do all the work and not owning up to her responsibilites *shrug*

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        1. Oh you are so right, it doesn’t change the fact that what she’s doing is unfair! (Believe it or not, Mari will even acknowledge this in an upcoming chapter… Oh jeez I have said too much XD)

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  8. I can’t believe she still doesn’t get it. She’s got two adorable little sons to care for, amazing parents who are too willing to look after them and she just runs around town like she used to?! What the hell!?! She needs a wake up call, and if having two children (at the same time!!!) doesn’t do it, I have no idea what will.

    Great chapter btw 😉

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  9. Honestly, what they can do is call Humberto, or those kids won’t grow up with any parents at all… Maybe he can pull her through it…

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  10. You cant force someone to have a wake up call though Mark does need and maybe Alex and Jade can push her in the right direction the wake call will only come when Mari opens her damn eyes and hopefully that will be soon.

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    1. I agree with Hales. We can’t force her to wake up. I’m sure citizen is planning to be nice to Mari eventual #teamoptimism. It’s just torture waiting through 20 chapters for her to wake up. #teampostitallnow!

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  11. Okay, I think it would be for the best if she’d just move out and dissapear, that way she could ‘protect’ her children even better. (At least by her logic.)
    I’m seriously tired of her, she’s not fifteen anymore, for Watcher’s sake! I really hoped she’d wake up after becoming a mother, but if her own babies didn’t bring out the best in her, nothing will. I seriously don’t understand how can she neglect them so much, after last post I really believed she loved them.

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    1. She does love them! I know that her behavior seems illogical, but she loves these babies more than she’s ever loved anything.

      She has such a warped and twisted view of herself that she genuinely thinks it’s better to stay away from them. She fears that she will “fuck up their lives” the way she’s already fucked up her own. And she also believes that the babies will grow up to hate her. And she can’t handle the possibility of that.

      So her own, messed up way of dealing with that is to distance herself from the babies. She truly believes it’s for their own good.

      Mari is acting super irresponsibly and extremely irrationally too. But she does love her children, I promise!

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      1. Oh, I’m sorry – I didn’t want to upset you! Not at all.
        It’s just.. I don’t know. She may think she loves them, but she sure doesn’t act like that. To put it in a cliche way, love is putting someone else’s needs before your own. Even if someone else’s need is about changing the diaper, it should be still more important then her selfish excuses. She can’t just abandon them and call it love.

        Again, I’m sorry, I’m overreacting! I just have no sympathy for this kind of recklessness. It pisses me off like people who drive while drunk. 😀

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        1. It’s okay, I know everyone has very strong feelings about Mari right now. I’m just too sensitive, and I really do love Mari, despite it all.

          I hope you will eventually see that she really does love her sons very much. She really does. 🙂

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        2. I think I’m just wilty flower because I don’t want us going into Gen 3 with so many people believing Mari doesn’t love her kids haha (because you are not alone — there are like 3 other people who have also expressed doubt that Mari loves her children. I don’t want you to think I am singling you out haha)

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      2. Well, if she really love them, she has very funny way of showing it. I mean, most mothers would take extreme measures for their kids and do almost anything for their well being… and she just kind of, avoids them, because she had bad conscience?
        I totally understand that you’re sensitive about this, though, so I’ll try to tune down my complaints about Mari. 🙂 But she’s being special kind of selfish.

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        1. I think the thing to keep in mind is the “Alex and Jade are enabling her” thing. I mean, if she didn’t have them to rely on, she would absolutely be more involved in taking care of her kids.

          It’s like learned helplessness. Her parents have let her get away with her behavior and have been taking care of her kids for her, so she can continue this behavior because she knows the kids are in good hands. It would be a COMPLETELY different story if she didn’t have anyone else to fall back on. Again, doesn’t make it right, but it’s what is allowing her to continue behaving this way.

          Don’t feel bad about continuing to hate Mari. You aren’t alone! I don’t want my readers to censor themselves. 🙂

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          1. I don’t hate her. I just don’t think very highly of her. And I’m tired of her because she’s acting like she’s five years old. Damn, even Gabriella is more mature than she is at this point! But I certainly don’t hate her. 🙂
            And if ‘enabling’ is the reason than Mari is pretty much hopeless, isn’t she? No parents (or grandparents) in their right mind would let the infants starve or cry for hours just to force Mari to take care of her kid. I can’t imagine that happening, especialy with Alex and Jade.
            I hope that makes sense 🙂

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            1. Oh yes, I agree with what you’re saying abut Alex and Jade (I defend them too! I defend everyone XD Because I love my characters). They’re enabling her, but it’s almost like they don’t have a choice, y’know? So yes, you’re right!

              We will see what can happen to get through to Mari…

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    1. I wish Alex could hear you haha. But honestly, I feel like it would just be too hard for him to be able to do that, y’know? I mean clearly it would be what’s best for both the twins and Mari, but think about how hard that would be…

      I don’t think Alex and jade are strong enough to make that decision :-/

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      1. It’s hard/impossible depending on the person to make that decision on their own, but that’s where you have your partner to help you. They would have to support each other. I feel if Alex’s Mom and Dad was here (where is he by the way?) they could help him out with this!

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  13. You have captured Mari’s current thought-process perfectly! Mari thinks she is a terrible mother and that she will ruin her sons’ lives. 😦

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