Whew! This week has flown by. I think we have started to get a little more realistic about what it's like to have a baby. Don't get me wrong, Juliette is REALLY good! But let's just say there have been a few sleepless nights where little miss has decided to get up at 3 am and not go back to sleep until 6! These last few nights we've gotten more on track, but it was a little rough there for awhile!
This week Juliette took her first trip to the mall with her Abuela and Mama, had a visit from Valentina and Rob and became a US Citizen! She was as good as gold on all accounts!
We need Juliette to have a passport for our trip to France next month. We were going to try for UK, but we haven't been "settled" in the UK for 5 years. This won't be an issue once she has her Belgian citizenship because she will be a member of the EU with residence in the UK. Andrew has sent in his declaration for her to be a Belgian citizen to the Embassy, but we have to wait for an appointment that could take up to 4 weeks! So that leaves us with the US Passport.
After a thorough read of the US Embassy website last night, it was unfortunately necessary to bring Juliette with us to the 8 am appointment at the Embassy today. Since Andrew had to go straight to work afterwards, I had my mom come along to help me get home with the baby and gear.
We were out the door amazingly at 7:15 am, hailed a black cab and were at the Embassy with time to spare! Unfortunately, there was a cue outside the entrance as we weren't the only parents registering the birth of a baby at 8 in the morning! Security took forever and the kicker was - no cell phones in the building! Oh, and they had no place to store them. So my poor mom had to hang around outside while we took care of business. At this point, the lady checking us in said it could take hours to accomplish our appointment... great!
Once inside, we were the third ticket number. I little feed for Juliette and a diaper change later, our number was called! Only 20 minutes we had to wait! Everything went smoothly except for two small hiccups - we brought UK sized passport photos and we didn't bring our marriage certificate (which, to this moment, I still am not sure what it matters if we prove we are married - she's still born to two US citizens!).
So out the door we went to the Pharmacy down the block to get new passport photos. I had to literally hold up Juliette as they didn't have the nice bean bag set up to lay her on this time. The poor girl has an awful pic like her mama but mission accomplished.
Back at the embassy, it took us another 15 minutes to get back through security even when we didn't have to wait in the SUPER long cue that had formed. We turned in the pictures and then had to wait another 30 minutes before we were called to a window (this whole set up was DMV style) to literally hold up our baby to show her likeness to the pictures! How crazy.
BUT, she is now a US citizen, our marriage certificate has been mailed next day to the Embassy and we should have a passport within the next 4 weeks!
Weird baby thing this week? Juliette is losing a little bit of hair on the front of her head. Apparently this is normal, but it was coming in so cute! We'll see how this turns out...
We also had a 3 week photoshoot today. Please enjoy the photo highlights from Juliette's third week!
This week Juliette took her first trip to the mall with her Abuela and Mama, had a visit from Valentina and Rob and became a US Citizen! She was as good as gold on all accounts!
We need Juliette to have a passport for our trip to France next month. We were going to try for UK, but we haven't been "settled" in the UK for 5 years. This won't be an issue once she has her Belgian citizenship because she will be a member of the EU with residence in the UK. Andrew has sent in his declaration for her to be a Belgian citizen to the Embassy, but we have to wait for an appointment that could take up to 4 weeks! So that leaves us with the US Passport.
After a thorough read of the US Embassy website last night, it was unfortunately necessary to bring Juliette with us to the 8 am appointment at the Embassy today. Since Andrew had to go straight to work afterwards, I had my mom come along to help me get home with the baby and gear.
We were out the door amazingly at 7:15 am, hailed a black cab and were at the Embassy with time to spare! Unfortunately, there was a cue outside the entrance as we weren't the only parents registering the birth of a baby at 8 in the morning! Security took forever and the kicker was - no cell phones in the building! Oh, and they had no place to store them. So my poor mom had to hang around outside while we took care of business. At this point, the lady checking us in said it could take hours to accomplish our appointment... great!
Once inside, we were the third ticket number. I little feed for Juliette and a diaper change later, our number was called! Only 20 minutes we had to wait! Everything went smoothly except for two small hiccups - we brought UK sized passport photos and we didn't bring our marriage certificate (which, to this moment, I still am not sure what it matters if we prove we are married - she's still born to two US citizens!).
So out the door we went to the Pharmacy down the block to get new passport photos. I had to literally hold up Juliette as they didn't have the nice bean bag set up to lay her on this time. The poor girl has an awful pic like her mama but mission accomplished.
Back at the embassy, it took us another 15 minutes to get back through security even when we didn't have to wait in the SUPER long cue that had formed. We turned in the pictures and then had to wait another 30 minutes before we were called to a window (this whole set up was DMV style) to literally hold up our baby to show her likeness to the pictures! How crazy.
BUT, she is now a US citizen, our marriage certificate has been mailed next day to the Embassy and we should have a passport within the next 4 weeks!
Weird baby thing this week? Juliette is losing a little bit of hair on the front of her head. Apparently this is normal, but it was coming in so cute! We'll see how this turns out...
We also had a 3 week photoshoot today. Please enjoy the photo highlights from Juliette's third week!
Juliette looks precious! It's great to pictures of Andrew enjoying his little angel- he's going to be a wonderful Dad!
ReplyDeleteWhat great pictures! She is so beautiful and the pics with mom and dad are so cute! Your passport day sounds like a fiasco! Definitely similar to the craziness of the DMV here! Glad everything worked out and hopefully all the right documents will arrive soon!
ReplyDelete