how to travel overseas with an infant (part i)

Spoiler Alert: I still don't feel like either of us would say we actually know what we're doing, so the title is a lie. But here's what worked and didn't work, so maybe this would be better titled, "Some things we learned when we attempted traveling overseas with our infant, some things that worked, and some things we might do differently next time," but that's really long and I don't really want to change it.

For almost every year for the last seven years, Jeremy has spent the week or so surrounding Easter in Russelsheim, Germany, teaching at or, more recently, running a jump rope camp. In Germany, and a lot of places in Europe, they take their Easter holiday a little more seriously than we do in America, so students, and many adults, have the two weeks surrounding Easter off. This also means that the schools are not being used, so this camp is held the week after Easter at a school, camp runs all day in the gyms with short breaks in the cafeteria, everybody showers in the gym showers and then sleeps in the classrooms, etc. It really is so much fun, and I wish I'd had more camps like that growing up. I also always loved any reason to use school things, property or otherwise, for non-academic things, so really, this was a little kid dream come true for me.

Last year, I went with Jeremy and helped teach a tiny little bit (insert link for future post on how little I actually know about jump rope), and I absolutely loved it. We both had a great time and Jeremy was excited for me to be able to come again, but this year with a young baby, we only considered going for a minute. For a month or two, the plan was that Jeremy would go by himself and Berlin and I would kick it at home for the week. And then, about a month before Easter, Jeremy said, "Why not? We don't have any idea how long we're going to have this opportunity. And Berlin is only going to fly for free for so long."

So the next day I took Berlin to get his passport pictures taken.

Lesson number one: Babies need passports. Who knew?
Number 2: It is possible to take your own pictures at home, size them right, cut them out, etc. I've done it before. But, especially with an infant, I would not recommend it. Lots of places will take them for you for $7 or so, and then your work is done. To me, it is $7 well spent.
Number 3: When you call whichever place you've decided to get aforementioned pictures, make sure they know the passport pictures are for an infant. So they can prep.

I went to Maceys' photo center and told the guy at the counter I needed passport pictures. He had me walk back to the area with the white backdrop and asked me to stand facing him, when I said, "Oh, these pictures aren't for me. They're for him," and held up Berlin. The guy and his friend working with him both looked completely confused. "Babies need passports?" "Do you know the specifications for those?" "Do you need a picture of the whole baby?" "Maybe just his head and shoulders?" One of the guys hopped on the computer and started to google baby passport pics. I'd done my research and told them what I knew, the pages they'd found confirmed it, so then started the circus of trying to hold Berlin and his head up in front of the white background, trying to keep my hands out of the picture, trying to get Berlin to look at the camera, and trying with everything to get Berlin to squeak out one of his giant smiles.

In case you haven't seen it on Facebook already, here is the result:

Baby mug shot. I don't even think this looks like him. But all things considered, the guys did a really good job. And the U.S. Department of State accepted it, so we went with it. He'll get a new one in five years and still won't be old enough to know that he should never forgive us.

So passport application, check. We had just over three weeks before we were leaving, so with the door-to-door promise of three weeks, we hoped their wouldn't be any issues.