Hubby and I have decided to ignore everything I said in my Falmouth or Fiji post earlier this summer. We’re going on holiday. Abroad. We’d planned on going to Cornwall but when we added up the cost of a cottage for two weeks with petrol, parking, days out, food etc it wasn’t much cheaper. The sunshine got our vote and the thought of going on a package holiday was quite exciting as neither of us had been on one for years. It didn’t take long for our Trip Advisor addiction kick in and before I knew it we were planning a last minute holiday.
We thought the easy part would be getting passports for the boys. It turns out that getting passports for toddlers isn’t quite so easy.
I’ve actually had to wait a couple of weeks before writing this up as it was so stressful at the time and I thought I might just punch someone or cry. Or both. And I’m going to have to serialise the story into three parts as it’s a long and winding tale.
Anyway, it all began when I sent Husband into town with the boys to collect four passport applications. I thought ahead and told him to get four in case we made any mistakes. He didn’t listen and picked up two (mistake #1), then went to the passport photo booth and tried to get the boys to stand on his lap while he leaned away so that he wasn’t in shot (mistake #2). It was one of those booths where it takes pictures and asks you if you accept it or not before taking another. T1 was captured fine after a couple of goes. T2 on the other hand screamed and screamed. Two rounds of very expensive photos later and all Husband had to show for it was two strips of pictures of a toddler trying to escape, with his hands in every shot. They all arrived home grumpy and he told me that it was my go the following day.
Being a practical mum, I went online and found a camera shop that promised to take photos that were guaranteed to meet the requirements for £8. This seemed like the best option so we spent the evening filling in the forms so that we could drop everything off with our counter-signatory the following day after getting the pictures taken.
It wasn’t as easy as it looked. We made mistakes #3 and #4 and had no spare forms left.
I got up bright and early the next day and called into the Post Office to collect more forms (I got four this time just in case), then T2 and I called into the photo shop. He hated having his picture taken and screamed and tried to escape. The photographer didn’t look comfortable with kids and was desperate to get rid of us. I was so pleased to leave with a photo of a boy looking at the camera even if he didn’t look very happy in it.
When we got back home, Hubby went off to work and I checked the photo against the guidelines. Mistake #5. T2’s head was too big in the shot. I was alone with the boys by this time and knew the doorway to the shop was too small to fit our double buggy so I couldn’t go back until the following day (there was no way I’d risk taking the boys in holding my hand – not with so much expensive camera equipment in reaching distance!)
So we had to wait another night…
Read Passports for Toddlers part two and Passports for toddlers part three
