Claire Wiegand's Story: 2007 - 2008

Claire turned 18 in July and officially became an adult, with her mom, dad, and stepdad as her legal guardians. This was Claire's fourth year at Sheridan High School. She remained happy and healthy. Claire developed a bad habit of pulling books and videos off of shelves, because she has so many electronic books and electronic greeting cards that she assumes that all book-like objects will play music eventually if she can just figure out where to push it. As a result, we purchased a series of glass-door-covered shelves from IKEA, then replaced the knobs on them so that we can lock them by wrapping elastic hair ties around each pair of knobs. She has never tried to get into them, so it's worked well. Unfortunately, she still picked up bills, magazines, and anything else lying around that looks like it might be an electronic greeting card or book.

	Claire has amazing thick brown hair that grows surprisingly fast. In July, just after she turned 18, we cut her hair very short and donated 12 inches to Locks of Love. (July 2007)
	She looked just as cute with short hair. (July 2007)
	Sheridan High School celebrated their homecoming weekend with hair color and face painting. (October 2007)
	Here's Claire in her spooky Halloween shirt, dressed up for Halloween at her school. (October 2007)
	At Christmas, Claire kept busy playing with all of her sparkly new electronic toys. (December 2007)
	Claire is the best at giving hugs. (January 2008)
	We took Claire to the zoo to see the meerkat exhibit. Our first stop was the dolphin show because Claire enjoys it. (June 2008)
	We always stop to see turtles because Claire loves them ... even very large ones. (June 2008)
	Claire tried her hand at feeding the giraffe. (June 2008)
	Our last stop was the water play area where Claire got a little water splashed on her but didn't mind a bit. (June 2008)
	Several times, we headed to the Carmel Farmer's Market to pick up fruit, veggies, and homemade foods. Claire didn't seem to mind us using her wheelchair to help carry our bags of goodies. (July 2008) Next: 2008 - 2009