Taters.

My littlest little sister is in love with me.

She's not even actually my sister. By regulatory standards, she would be my niece, but her father was never legally adopted by my parents. He's so much older than me, that he had a hand in raising me, just like I had a hand in raising her, so she and I have much more of a "sisters" relationship.

She is addicted to me. Not in a way where she floods me and bugs me constantly when I'm away, but if I text our Austrian exchange sister, Hannah, she will text me no more than 30 seconds later in a fit of jealousy asking why I didn't text her. And I like that. I love when the girls need me.

If I am home with her, yes, it's a constant thing. She has to be touching me every second. If I sit, she sits next to me. Or lies her head on my lap. Or spoons me like a body pillow. She must always have a hand or a foot on me at all times. She is constantly touching my face or winding her fingers into my hair.

She's not even a little girl, she's 14. And I hope she never ever grows out of it. I love having little sisters.

I moved to California 2 weeks after she was born. I held her exactly one time and then didn't see her again until she was a year and a half old. A very different situation than I had with her 2 other sisters who I spent time with almost daily. When I did see her, I think, at first, she didn't feel the same bond that a little girl feels with you when you take care of her as a baby. A Baby knows your smell, your voice, they have a very deep sense of you. When she was 5, I moved back to Michigan briefly and I took care of her all the time so she started to develop that attachment. I think she also saw the bond between the other 2 girls and I so she just trusted deep down that we were obviously family even though she didn't see me all the time. Very much the same way I felt about her father when I was her age. He was older, he was out of the house, but there were pictures of him and when he did come around, he was my brother. I didn't know him as anything else.

Sometimes I wonder if she's making up for that lost time now when she hangs on to me so tightly. She's also a very different personality than her other sisters, she's very much like me. Very bouncy, very sassy, very giggly and pouty all at the same time. Even her father says he can't believe we're not actually related because she's a clone of me when I was her age. Maybe when I'm around, she feels that similar connection and clings to it. She loves her other sisters fiercely, more than she loves me, but you just have a slightly different feeling when a kindred spirit is around.

Its very difficult to watch her get older and talk about boys and ask me for advice on things I don't think she's mature enough to handle. It's hard to know that she's probably one day not going to want to curl up next to me and sleep with her head on my shoulder. And what will be the worst is if she really doesn't grow out of it naturally; knowing that one day the best thing for her will be to pry her arms from around my waste and encourage her to use them as wings to go to other parts of the world and love me from a far distance, just the way I loved her when she was born.