My Photogenic Family

One more thing to check off our mental to do list (I really should write an actual list one of these days) is getting passport/visa/alien resident card photos taken. For some reason I expected it to be quick and easy, but it ended up being a massively stressful time. William was sleeping when we arrived and had to be woken up since he needed to have his eyes open in the picture. As soon as he woke up he started wailing. We were informed that he couldn't be crying and there couldn't be any shiny wetness on his lips. He also needed to be seated bolt upright at arms length from me and I couldn't have any part of my fingers shown supporting his head. Since he is 5 weeks old and has virtually no neck control this was ridiculously difficult. I was under the naive impression that all places that took passport photos had those special chairs to prop your baby in while their picture was being taken. His head was lolling, he was shrieking, we were getting concerned/dirty looks from people waiting for their photos to be taken, and I was getting progressively more agitated by the second. Finally I decided that I would feed him and hope he would calm down enough for just one good head shot. Twenty minutes later William was fed and once again asleep, but this time so deeply that nothing I did would wake him up. Finally after stripping him down, blowing cold air on him, and dripping gripe water into his mouth he woke up...and started crying again. Somehow, miraculously, we got a shot of him. It took almost two hours, was extremely stressful, and ended up being super expensive with all of the copies we needed for the various forms and cards for all four of us.

The only positive aspect was that today at the passport office Dustin was in and out again in 10 minutes. After the catastrophe of our photo session I was expecting a 2 hour wait in line just to be told that the pictures (especially William's) needed to be retaken.  I am so glad the boys will be that much older next time we need to do this!

Paperwork

They didn't have to remind Theo not to smile or show his
teeth (all 3 of them)

We have been given not quite three weeks from the moment that we found out we were accepted (April 18th) to the day that the reply form and health check are supposed to be received (May 6th). I think for some people this would be absolutely impossible, but for us the time constraint has been no problem at all. Dustin got an appointment with his doctor, including the chest x-ray and labs, as well as his criminal record check within a week and a half of our acceptance. I guess there has to be some benefit to living in a small town! We have heard that the criminal record check can take months if it is done in a larger city, especially if your name is flagged and you need fingerprinting. It seems like we have had a pretty stress free time completing the initial paperwork. The next step is to get another passport for Theo, since his expires in October, and one for William. I am pretty sad that we will have to give up Theo's passport since his picture was taken when he was about nine months old and is really cute in a deer in headlights sort of way. It seems pretty ridiculous that we need to take a picture of William since most 5 x 7 cm photos of a one month old baby will look indistinguishably similar, but oh well.