Getting a Passport for a Baby

Here is how I went about getting Drake's passport. 

In Canada, babies under the age of 3 can get a passport for $22 CAD and is valid for 3 years.

Fill out the application form: It is pretty straight forward, only two pages. One parent can be the applicant on behalf of the baby and the other parent (or relative) can be the guarantor. Baby passports don't need a signature, I almost accidentally signed the signature box on Drake's behalf.

Birth Certificate: One of the required document for Drake's passport application is his birth certificate with our birth information. The certificate can be ordered online which was a disastrous experience.  Greg (yes, he is taking the fall for this one) filled and submitted the online form with the wrong birth province, his own birth province. I thought I just had to pay the fee and submit the online form again to receive the birth certification with the right information.  When I received the new certificate, it still had the wrong province on it.  Apparently the form can only be submitted once and that one was the one that counted.  There was no changing it online due to security reasons but when I ordered it the second time there was no prompt to warn me that the information I entered was different from the first one to stop me from paying second time for the wrong information.  To correct the situation, Greg had to pay for a notarized copy of his birth certificate and pay a change fee. Finally a $27 certificate cost us almost $100.

Passport photo: Not every passport photo shop will do infants (ie: Costco). Walmart and Sears will do passport photo for infants. We went to Lens and Shutter in downtown Vancouver. The photographer laid Drake down on a white mat on the ground. He took quite a few shots since Drake decided he was going to put up a fight and not make this easy. The best one out of the bunch had Drake not looking straight at the camera (not to mention it is a bad picture of, in my none-bias opinion, my very photo generic and cute baby which is proof that no one takes good looking passport photos). I was a bit concerned whether the passport office would accept them. The photographer said they tend to be more lenient with babies. Besides, if they were not accepted Lens and Shutter would retake for free. Cost: $9.99 CAD plus tax.

Trip to the Passport office: the Downtown Vancouver passport office opens at 7:30AM. I was there right at 7:30 hoping I didn't have to wait too long. Apparently everyone else had the same idea. There were at least 40 people ahead of me and I had to wait about 45 minutes for my turn. They did accept Drake's passport photos. Phew.

Two weeks later the passport was delivered to me at home via Canada Post.

Travel with a baby, bad idea?

I'm finally back blogging! Since my last trip to the New Orleans, I have been busy creating another human. Meet the future world traveller: Drake David Rui Matthews.

Earlier this month, Drake at age 2 month got his first passport.

Before Drake was born many people told us life is going to completely change after children including not being able to travel as much as we use to. While I looked forward to my son's birth I was getting a bit bummed about our future travel prospects as a family.
One day I was sitting around with my massive belly eating ice cream and watching a Chinese talk show about traveling with children. One of the mothers said: We love to travel. We believe making our children fit (or adjusted) into our way of life, not trying to fit our life into theirs. A light bulb went off! She was absolutely right. Why should we change how much we travel because now we have a baby? We just had to travel differently. Greg and I became very excited over this new take on parenthood. We did some research. There are so many benefits to traveling with your baby as much as possible.

Valuable bonding time: Most people argue that taking a baby traveling is pointless since he is not going to remember the experience. I'm lucky that I will be spending almost 24 hours with Drake for the next 10 months. Greg doesn't have that luxury. Travel will give him that chance to deepen his bond with Drake.

Baby travel is cheap. Most domestic air travel for kids under 2 years old is free. International air travel is 10% of your airfare. Of course, free fare also means I have put the baby on my lap during the entire flight, but I found some airlines (ie: China Eastern) will provide you with a complimentary bulkhead bassinet . A friend also gave me a tip when booking seats. Instead of booking seats right next to each other if you are traveling with the hubby or another person, book the seats with an empty seat in between. Doing this increases the chance you will end up with an empty middle seat to put the baby in since most single travelers tend to stay away from middle seats.

Of course, we understand we still have to make certain adjustments and take precautions while we travel with him. For example, we have to reduce amount of bouncing around from one spot to another. During our trip to South America we spent a few hours in Lima, a couple of days in Cusco and Macchu Picchu, before flying to La Paz. We moved around a lot and spent two nights at the most at one hotel. With a baby we will reduce number of spots we hit and take our time with the spots we do hit.

We can't wait to plan our next trip with Drake!

(found this on weibo.com and love it. but don't know where this photo came from originally)