I am the oldest of four children in my family. I have three younger brothers that always keep life interesting. However, what you would never know by looking at my family is that my youngest brother was adopted. He looks just like the rest of us, but that's not by chance. My youngest brother is biologically my cousin. However, this is something that my family and I often forget because he's been in our home since he was two weeks old.

Due to legal issues, his biological parents were unable to raise him so CYS came knocking on my parents door asking if we could foster him. My parents did not take this decision lightly, my youngest biological brother was seven at the time, and they were not sure if they wanted to start all over with a newborn. This was also another kid to support financially. They took our opinions into consideration and made their decision. My parents went and picked him up when he was two weeks old, and we're all that he's known since. He is eight-years-old now.

My parents, who had already raised three kids, were forced to jump through hoops to foster him because they were not yet foster parents. This included visits from the social worker at any time, along with parenting classes from a person who didn't even have kids themselves.

In the beginning, the goal of CYS was to reunite him with his biological parents; however, as time went on, this changed. We fostered him for three years before we were finally able to officially adopt him and change his last name.

What many people don't realize is that most of the time my family forgets that we adopted him. The only time that it ever really occurs to me to tell people is whenever I am explaining the large age gap between him and the rest of us.

Compared to my biological brothers and me, he also struggles more in school, which has been something that we all pitch in to help with. Some nights homework takes an hour or more with multiple people helping him along the way, but we all love him and just want to help him succeed.

With how close we've grown, I have no idea what I would do without him. He is always there to cheer me up when I am sad, cuddle with, play board games with, watch movie with, or run to the store with. He may be a messy little tornado, but he is also the cutest little brother. So if you really want to know what it's like to have an adopted sibling, just look at your siblings and know that we feel the same way about him as you do about yours!