Day 59: I'm a snowman...

...get me out of here!

This morning we discovered that our newest family member appeared to be feeling the onset of Spring and has removed his scarf in an attempt to keep his cool (or so it appears). Of course anyone familiar with thermodynamics knows that he would be better off keeping it on, so we can assume that a career as a physicist is out of the question.

As for the rest of us, Exile #3 had her first swimming lesson - and she had a blast. In fact the picture (below) caught one of the few moments when she wasn't grinning from ear to ear.

The floatation device is called a backpack and is several floats with a waistband - looks like it would just dunk the child face-down in the water, but actually works well, we'll try to get her some practice with one before next weeks lesson.

We also went shopping for new shoes for the girls, an interesting experience - when Exile #2 showed the shop assistant the shoes she liked, the assistant said "You like these for every day? That's so European!"

The other day I finally made sense of a term I'd heard a year or two ago. When USB memory-sticks were becoming common in the workplace, a visitor referred to their use as 'sneaker-net' I thought he was referring to their ability to circumvent IT policies in a sneaky way, but it really means that you take your data and walk across the room with it (rather than transferring it over a network).

The reason our choice of footwear was considered 'European' is of course, that here, for the feet of children and, presumably, computer users, the sneaker is king.