craven.fr

In planning our trip to my brother's wedding this summer (woohoo!), we were faced with the challenge of figuring out how to transport an infant across the ocean. And in so doing we discovered that the whole business has become a lot more complicated "in a post 9-11 world"—whether out of a fear of baby terrorists, or babies smuggling drugs in their diapers, I don't know.

So whereas before it was sufficient to add James to his mother's passport, it is now necessary for him to have his own passport, even at three months old. That might not sound so bad, but the kicker is that he has to follow all the same new super-strict passport restrictions that adults now have to as well: no smiling, no hats or glasses, both eyes clearly open and both ears visible.

Getting such a picture of James was no easy matter.

On the positive side, since Emilie's mother and step-father both work at the prefecture, they at least had an inside track to getting to the passport service to present their documents. On the other hand, despite a whole day of trips back and forth to the photo booth, they could not get an acceptable picture. Here is the first attempt:

The problem here is the hand is visible holding him (he has to be held up because he can't sit up on his own yet). So a second attempt was made, holding him from behind:

This one is no good because the head has to fill up the frame of the picture, and he is too zoomed out! By this time a couple hours had gone by and so the baby fell asleep. He had to be woken up for the third picture, which he did not appreciate:

This one is no good, not because he's crying, but because his ear is cropped off on the edge of the picture! At that point they gave up, and went another day to the one professional photographer in town who was willing to do passport photos for infants. After all that we were finally able to get an acceptable photo, and James now has his very own passport:

Phew!

Of course everybody says that every parent thinks his baby is the cutest, and true to form I do find James to be a very handsome baby. So does his mother—in fact she was so sure of it that she sent his pictures in to her favourite parenting magazine, Parents, for their "Baby of the Month" competition. And wouldn't you know it, he won!

So, in the July issue of Parents you can see our son's smiling picture. Along with that honour he also got a personalized gold and diamond bracelet worth 175€, and one beamingly proud mother. We sure are glad she sent in his picture!

It has been a while since I blogged about passing the written test for obtaining a French driver's license. That process took months and cost more hundreds of euros than I like to think about. But once it was done, it only opened up the next phase of the process—driving lessons from a government-certified Auto École. This process also takes months, and also costs hundreds of euros :-(

You cannot take the actual driving test until your driving school teacher decides that you are ready (schools are penalised if the candidates they present don't pass), and the test itself is quite strict, and far more thorough than what I knew in the States.

Anyway, I took my driving test on Wednesday, and passed. All told it will have taken about ten months and a couple thousand euros to get a driver's license—nothing like driving in the States, where a license is considered more of an entitlement than a privilege. At any rate, I'm glad to finally be allowed to legally drive in Europe, and I did learn how to drive a stick-shift in the process, so I guess I at least learned something.

I think that because I am a new father I am perhaps more attuned as to what an incredibly stupid idea this is, but it was amazing enough that I thought I would do my part to publicise it a bit more. Gabe describes it better than I could so I recommend visiting the link to know what I'm talking about. Who on earth came up with that bright idea?!

(And just in case you question the source I've cited, you can see them for yourself on Kellogg's website.)

Sincerest apologies to loyal readers, who have been unable to access the site since Monday. A thunderstorm took out our DSL modem, which left us without internet or television until I could get it replaced. All is well now, though, and I now have a surge protector for the phone jack as well as the power, so this shouldn't happen again.

So, I'm glad to have gotten the TV back on just in time for the French Open finals and the Euro 2008 soccer championship. Now I just need to sort through the massive backlog of podcasts I have accumulated over the week.