Permission to come home

We will be travelling with Wallace internationally soon and baby cross-border travel is not so easy these days.   There’s some paperwork involved.  Rightfully so I think.  It is probably best just to keep babies where they are.   But like it or not, Wallace must fly to the other side of the world in July and to do that my boy needs a Canadian Passport.   This requires proof of citizenship.   And without a Canadian birth certificate the ‘proof’ is a certificate for which one must apply and generally wait about a year to receive.  There is, of course, a nice little loophole in this system for us, but it involves jumping through a few bureaucratic hoops.

The most (and only) interesting aspect of this process so far has been the passport photo.  The idea of a baby passport photo is almost inherently funny to me.  And I can’t explain why I like to be a goof on this blog – but I do... so here you go.

True story:  there are four simple rules to baby passport photography,

1. White sheet
2. Eyes open
3. Mouth closed
4. Head straight

Kate and I took a sleeping Wallace to a photo shop and we were told about these ‘rules’.  They may sound simple, but they are in fact nearly insurmountable.

You see, Wally doesn’t keep his head straight, ever.  Ever! And he does not ever close his mouth while opening his eyes... I’ve just never seen it happen.   The photographer told us to expect this process to be difficult and that it may be a waste of many hours of his time to wake up Wallaby and try to get him to behave like a suitable young Canadian citizen.  He suggested instead that we take the ‘picture’ ourselves at home when Wallace was wide awake and happy.  We were to email potential candidate shots to the ‘photo shop’ and they would select the best one, crop, and print it for us.

This actually seemed like a fun little project for me.  And it was.  I took a LOT of pictures, well over a hundred I think.  Here’s a sample of some of them.

 One of the pictures above was actually selected as Wally’s passport photo.  Keeping in mind the ‘rules’, can you guess which one it was?

I can tell you that it wasn't this one: 

or this one:

We tried very hard to explain to him what was expected from little Canadians:

But he didn't listen.  He just kept on looking cute and breaking 'rules'.  

Now if you haven't figured out which of those pictures actually satisfies the 'Passport' requirements.  I will show you... although it pains me to do so.  All I can say is that I hope that Wallaby grows up with some confidence and a sense of humour... because this little treat will come back to him :)

Every time I look at this picture I laugh.  It's awesome!   For some strange reason it reminded me of the Bruce Willis movie: Fifth Element.

Tell me, would you open your front door if this group of kids came knocking: