Yay for you but also sad about the wait. I agree with you about the sandbox. It can be done but in addition to the problems you mentioned, you always end up with people (myself included sometimes) who don't know what they have to do to trigger events and start moving forward again. And the timeline problem - where one part of the story has moved forward a lot and another part has barely budged so things are happening out of context and characters are talking about things that haven't happened yet in the past tense. Sandbox can be done but it's really complicated and there are problems no matter what you do. Anyway, enjoy your daughter - one day you'll look up and she won't be a child anymore. It happens really fast so enjoy while you can.