The other big thing that's happened is my thirteen-year-old niece, Kaydence Michele Westley-Plumb, is now taking college-level courses. She's just short of actually starting college, but the only reason I'm not letting her stay on campus by herself is she's too young. She actually wants to go, though.
Kaydence scored a 2045 on her college admissions test, which is a better score than all of my kids had, and they were all older than she was when they took it. The highest of my kids' scores was Sage and hers was about 1800. She took her test her senior year of high school, Kaydence is only a freshman. Kaydence's score was the highest in Simland this term.
Sierra probably would have done better than she actually did if she had actually applied herself. As it was her score was about a 1650 or so. They only found out when she got to Fort Starch that she was wicked smart.
Anyway, back to Kaydence. I found out something else about her recently, too. A couple of somethings.
First, she apparently has no qualms about playing with a rubber ducky in the bathtub.
The other thing is that she sucks her thumb. Her right thumb.
I noticed that she'd polish all of her fingernails except the thumb nail on her right hand - and now I know why.
The only one of my kids who had that habit was Skylar and she quit when she was very little.
There's the other small fact that she shares her bed with her dad at her age, too.
And to the rest of the world, she seems so -
together. People are amazed at how she could have come out of the environment she did and not be in serious trouble. She's never seen the inside of any juvenile detention center, she doesn't have a police record, she's never been in rehab. Even my own daughter, Skylar, teases on how straight and narrow she is, calling her 'Miss Perfect.'
I did arrange for her to speak with Sierra's therapist, though. Even though getting Sierra herself to go to therapy is a chore. The bigger chore, though, might be getting Kaydence to
stop talking. Seriously. I've never seen anyone who's actually looking forward to spilling her secrets on a stranger's couch.
Kaydence, as I've said before on this blog, came from a very abusive, neglectful environment - even though she is the daughter of showbiz parents. Her mother, the pop star "Madison Avenue," tried to make her into a miniature version of herself by putting lots of makeup on her and dressing her in skimpy clothes - but when Kaydence insisted on bringing books with her everywhere and was reading all the time, Madison ridiculed and belittled her.
She preferred test tubes to teddy bears, which Madison couldn't understand at all, and spent hours on the couch reading books bigger than she was.
Her father, my younger brother Sebastian "Bassy" Plumb, stood idly by and watched all this happen, failing to protect his little girl. I love my brother to death and can forgive a lot of things, but that - that I
cannot forgive.
The couple split for good when Kaydence was six years old, and they spent the next year in court in a long, drawn-out custody battle that made international headlines.
When custody was awarded to my brother, Kaydence instead spent the next six years taking care of
him. She balanced his checkbook, reminded him of his appointments, and was basically his parent instead of the other way around. For four of those years, the two of them were living off of the money she'd saved from her allowance. All Kaydence would buy, mostly, was books and a few outfits. She wasn't extravagant at all.
Bassy wouldn't pressure Madison into coughing up any of her earnings to help support her daughter. Madison continued to live her glitzy showbiz lifestyle while her daughter was barely getting by on table scraps.
In fact, Madison bought a huge seaside condo - a house her daughter will probably never set foot in. How can you turn your back on someone you gave birth to? I don't understand that at all. I probably never will.
My own kids so far haven't really reacted to me taking custody of Kaydence. They're busy living their own lives.
Satis is balancing her internship with raising her young son. I keep wondering if AJ will take his relationship with Alexandra to the next level. Sage is preparing for her wedding this summer to Kyle Heilman, her college boyfriend. They've bought a huge old horse ranch out in Appaloosa Plains. She plans on having the extra rooms there as a home for troubled and underprivileged youth. The place is going to be sprawling with both kids and animals.
Sierra is, well, Sierra - although her newfound friendship with Kaydence has given me cause to pause.
Skylar starts college this fall, which will only leave Sawyer at home - and he's about to turn teen.
Recently Kaydence became a big sister, which is a task she not only adores, but she takes very seriously. In fact, she does not use the term
half when it comes to Jazz, even though he is technically her half-brother.
Both of Jazz's biological parents, Cherise and Sebastian, are utterly clueless as to how to deal with him.
Kaydence is apparently the only person Jazz will respond to.
Not only is Kaydence scary smart...
...but she reads everything she can put her hands on.
When I went to orientation with Kaydence, she
insisted on wearing a suit. She wanted to look professional for her first day of classes.
That perfectionist streak, I think, she
did inherit from Madison - besides her face, of course. Sebastian never did care much for clothes and fashion, and even when he was at the top of the biz he basically threw on anything that came to him, even when he had stylists at his beck and call. Kaydence, on the other hand, is a clotheshorse. She likes to look good, she likes to put her outfits together, she likes being coordinated. None of my daughters are as particular about clothes as Kaydence is - not even Skylar.
And that's not the only area where Kaydence is a perfectionist. At thirteen, not only is she a perfectionist, but she is also a workaholic. While the other girls were in the swimming pool at Skylar's slumber party, Kaydence sat poolside, doing her homework and working on her latest story.
At times she seems to be thirteen going on thirty. She doesn't get home most days until 8 or 9 at night. She goes to school, then her extracurricular activity, then shoots scenes for the TV show that she got a role on. And right after coming home at 8 or 9 at night, she has to do her homework. Even with all that, she
still makes straight A's.
I don't know what the future holds for my niece, the little girl who never truly was one. She loves college, she loves the whole environment, she's studying multiple subjects getting multiple degrees. She's said she wants to be a director, a scientist, a writer, a doctor, and she's even taking up painting now. She's also entertained the idea of a performance career, but not in singing, like her mother. She's thought about becoming a magician or acrobat. She loves computers - in fact, she's majoring in computer information systems now - and is taking courses in astronomy and engineering. She's five-two in heels and a hundred pounds dripping wet. Basically, she's a little whirlwind, a ball of enthusiasm and energy, constantly on the go. One of her teachers told me she has the energy of ten sims. In fact, after her own classes she's actually tutoring much older students.
If the trouble with my brother was that he was so damn talented that he couldn't focus on one thing, then the problem is multiplied with his daughter Kaydence - who in her case is so damn talented that she wants to
do everything. The last kid to show up in Sunset Valley with that set of dazzling gifts, was, of course, Bassy himself. Of course, I have mixed feelings myself about all this. There's a part of me that would have liked the kid with all the dazzling abilities to have been mine instead of my brother's. But, it is what it is, and my brother is my brother, the luckiest SOB alive. And, besides, of the two of us, it was my brother who won the talent lottery in the first place.
I've already said, though, that Andy and I combined our own genes and our kids have their own abilities and interests - and they're all different, that's the thing. When Bassy and Madi combined their genes, as combustible as they were, for all the drama that they had, their genes combined, made Kaydence. As far as I'm aware, she is the only result of the combination of both of their genes. And what a result it is.
On top of everything else, I've even heard that she's in possession of a set of pipes - a la Madison, her pop-star mom. Her stepmom, Cherise, told me in confidence once that she heard Kaydence sing in the shower, and she's actually got a nice voice - but she doesn't want to sing in public. Cherise has actually been encouraging her to give it a go at the school talent show.
Obviously the college thing is something that has to be discussed with Bassy. But it's something she clearly wants and I don't know if I want her up there alone. If something could be worked out, it would surely help, because she is clearly in need of a bigger challenge beyond high school and she's the type that loves to learn.
