Ela's Passport

One of the challenges of having a baby outside of the US is getting her citizenship made all nice and official. As military in Japan, the process goes something like this: First, the doctor gives you an application for the Japanese birth certificate (both in English and Japanese). You take that to city hall, along with your marriage certificate and passports, and they give you a Japanese birth certificate (in English and Japanese). You take that, along with several forms, passports, and two passport pictures of the baby to an office on base, where they mail it to the powers that be in Tokyo and get you a form aknowledging the birth of an American child in a foreign country.
Yes, that's right, we needed passport photos of a child who is only a week or two old. Without them, we can't get her passport or social security number, and it'll take several months after you get them taken to get the passport in question. So how do you get these pictures? When we started, we had no idea. All we knew were the requirements for the final product: Only Ela's head in the picture, no other people, a white background, and her eyes have to be open. Remember: Ela is one week old. She can't hold up her own head, much less sit, and her eyes are open 3 minutes in the average hour. So we had a challenge ahead of us.
At first, we thought we were required to use the photo booth on base that makes passport pictures. This was a total disaster. We went through the process twice, with me, covered in a blanket, holding a screaming Ela up to the right level and hoping her eyes would open for a second for the picture. The result is two sets of pictures of a screaming child and my chin. We decided we'd spent enough money on a lost cause and took these back to the office that sends the stuff to Tokyo. They said neither would work, but that we could use a digital camera at home and then cut the pictures to the right size. They even gave us a little passport photo template so we could measure it out... Note to the office: why wouldn't you give that to parents the first time around? :::sigh:::
The next 24ish hours were spent anxiously watching Ela for moments when her eyes were open, then quickly laying her on a white blanket and snapping lots and lots of pictures. The results ranged from funny to cute to crazy. One didn't even have Ela in it: she wiggled away or the camera moved, who knows. I know the point of digital is you can delete the ones you don't want, but who wouldn't want these:



Two big concerns gradually arose: 1) would the quilting on the one blanket make it not a "white background" and 2) would it be bad if her hands (which are always near her face) got in the picture. So we settled on this picture as our choice to submit:

Not the cutest one we took, but it passed the test when we took it in, and now it's on its way to Tokyo with the rest of the paperwork. Check that off the list! Now that it's done, I'm told she can use that same passport and picture until she's ten. Clearly the passport people have their priorties right here... or not...