Sunday, October 31, 2010

Your papers, please

So we'd like to take Dylan this winter to see both sets of grandparents. Which means traveling to Canada. Which means getting him a passport.

You wouldn't think that this should be so hard. Dealing with some bureaucracy, paying some absurd fees, maybe waiting in some lines, and waiting some time, but it shouldn't be that big of a deal.

The problem is that they want passport photos. For an infant. Which will be completely meaningless in that he won't look anything like what he does in the photos by the time he travels, let alone by the time the passport expires.

The State Department has some pretty stringent requirements about what constitutes an acceptable passport photo. Mind you, these requirements aren't that difficult for an adult. But they're pretty ridiculous (and hard to meet) for an infant.

We decided to just do things the "easy" way and pay some money to have them take the photos at the post office, where we had to go anyway to apply for the passport. The problem is that whomever I spoke with on the phone basically totally lied to me about what they were and were not willing to do with respect to infant passport photos. So after some unsuccessful attempts there, we gave up, left, and went home.

We've had a few photo sessions over the last few days when Dylan seems to be in an agreeable mood, trying to get a usable picture. We're still not 100% there, but close. But in the meantime, I thought I'd post a few of my favorite outtakes, while ranting against the State Department.

1 comment:

Judy said...

Bureaucracy adheres to rigid rules in order to promote order, but in sacrificing common sense all it does is promote disorder.