For Toni

I promised a while ago that I'd write a journal on love Thursday about my step-daughter, so here goes...

T is 16 now. Yes, that's right, just 15 years younger than me. Her dad and I got together when she was 9, and her first sister was born just after her tenth birthday.

T is a beautiful, smart and loving girl. She lives in Germany with her mom. When we lived in Germany, she spent every other weekend and most school holidays with us.

T was totally enamored with her first sister from the start. She would play and play and play with S! I remember once, before F (#3) was born, DH and I went out to dinner and his sister babysat T and S. S was maybe 18 months old and T was 11 1/2 or so. T decided that Auntie wasn't putting S to bed right and took the job on herself. She sat in the dark, rocking my baby for nearly an hour, singing to her so she could go to sleep. Now THAT is LOVE.

Unfortunately T took it REALLY hard when we moved to America. She broke off all contact with her dad for over a year. She and I were okay, and we emailed all the time. We had sort of a big-sister / little-sister realtionship going for a while. I hoped that she could learn from my experiences and not make the same mistakes I did...

Now T and her dad are back in touch, but she still has not wanted to come visit us in America. S misses her a lot, and talks about her all the time. F never really had a chance to get to know her... I hope that can change one day.

My dream? That T would choose to do a year of high school over here, or even go to college. I'd like to have her be a bigger part of our lives. She's such a cool kid, smart as a whip and so kind. I hope that one day, we can all be closer. We ARE family already, but I wish that one day we could have more....

PS- Sorry my pictures are all old, she is a typical teenager and refuses to share any current pictures of herself with us :( The first and last are from 2006.