The other day, everyone was out doing stuff except Sophie and I, so I decided to take her out for a little treat.  We hopped in the car, her of course lugging around the iPad with her eyes glued to the screen as if it was in her DNA to build communities and herd sheep in Minecraft.  "What kind of dessert do you want?  You can have anything!" She chose a slushie, so we stopped at QT where she happily filled a cup with water-melon flavored ice.  She tagged along close behind me as we went up to pay, then seemed embarrassed when I was short a quarter and had to go out to the car to fetch some more money. When we we got back in the car, she smiled at me, but this time she didn't play her video game.
  "You know Sophie, I'm not gonna be able to be with you forever.  That's why I wanna do fun stuff like this.  In just a little more than a year I'm gonna go off to college!"
  From the rearview mirror, I could see her eyes widen.  "But Katie, I don't want you to go!"
  "Baby, I can't stay here forever!  I gotta make my own life!"
  She sadly seemed to accept this, but when I mentioned that I hope to go to BYU Hawaii, her tone shifted to full-out panic.  "No, Katie, you CAN'T!  Katie, there's TSUNAMIS there! You could die!"
  What the heck?!  Since when did my baby sister know about stuff like this?  But she kept going on, going into details about various natural disasters that occur in various areas of the world.  "That's why you should stay in Arizona, cause we don't have any bad things happen here.  Except when it rains and there's lightning.  It just shouldn't rain so we can be safe."
  I laughed softly.  "Well, no, hun... We need rain so that the plants can grow."
  That clicked for her and she seemed to acknowlege the naivete in the previous question.  "Oh yeah.  If it doesn't rain, then we'll all go extinct.  Like woolly mammoths!  Are mammoths elephants?"
  She fired off questions, and in my shock I tried to answer.  "Well, they're related.  And sometimes we need things that might seem bad at first so we can survive.  We don't like lightning, but we need rain."
  "So do we need hurricanes or tornados to survive?"
  "Well... no."
  "It would be terrible if humans went extinct.  Katie, I still want you to stay in our house even when you get married (how many days is it till you're getting married and having a baby Katie?) cause I'm gonna miss you too much!"
  At some point in this conversation that continued on, my eyes blurred.  Wow, is this crazy.  She's growing up.  
  And that sneaky quote creeps into my head every time... *sniffle* My baby's all grown up and savin' China!