Passport Photos

Chances are that, unless you live abroad with your off-spring, you probably haven't had the pleasure of getting your newborn baby a passport. You likely aren't that crazy (i.e. stupid) to plan international travel with a new baby if you don't live abroad anyway. However, if you live abroad, you must get your baby a passport within 42 days of his/her birth. Otherwise he/she will be stateless. And illegal, for that matter. The former just sounds scary and the latter comes with a possible $2000 fine and/or 6-months jail time (for you or the baby? Because if you have a colicky one, you may just send them along for a few months reprieve). Also terrifying, without a passport your child will be unable to travel across boarders. So in the unlikely event that the US Embassy needs to evacuate you suddenly or in the more likely event that you are dying to soak up some rays while laying on a white sandy beach and drinking mai tais, you would not want to be in the predicament of having one of your children ineligible for travel.

Now there are rules to everyone's passport photo, which you may or may not be aware of. For example, these rules include:

• 2 x 2 inches (51 x 51 mm) in size
• Sized such that the head is between 1 inch and 1 3/8 inches (between 25 and 35 mm) from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head. 
• Taken within the last 6 months to reflect your current appearance
• Taken in front of a plain white or off-white background
• Taken in full-face view directly facing the camera
• With a neutral facial expression and both eyes open

These are pretty simple rules for anyone over a couple years of age. However, applying the "full-face view directly facing the camera" with "both eyes open" to a newborn photo is.....challenging, to say the least. Like, labor might be faster and less painful than getting this done. It is also mentioned that for newborns, neither your hands nor their hands can be in the picture. Which is tricky because you are trying to hold their head straight and they are twitching their arms all over. Also because newborns sleep for 80% of the day. Of their awake time, 80% of that is at some ungodly hour of the night during which the only thing you are doing is trying to coax them back to sleep. That leaves about 15 minutes of daytime when your baby is awake and you are willing to wield a camera in attempt of a photo that meets the above criteria. 

Now I had booked my appointment at the US embassy for Nate's passport application to allow myself a full week to get a good photo. For me, I chose to attempt this challenge every day post-bath so Nate is awake and alert. There are usually at least a few minutes where he is satisfied and looking around, before he becomes so content that he falls asleep or becomes so starving that he is screaming for food. However, after day 6 of repeated photo failures, I had to cancel that embassy appointment and rebook for a week later. Considering that Nate spent 11 days in the hospital and it takes two weeks to obtain a new passport, we were getting dangerously close to our 42 day limit immigration buffer period. Yet still, most of our photo shoots ended up something like this:

Not looking at camera, hands in photo

Not looking directly at camera

looking at camera but moving, head probably too small

Top of head cut off, not looking at camera

Finally, 2 days before our second Embassy appointment, I got a picture that I was pretty sure would work. I spent large portions of that day patting myself on the back at my success. Eyes open: check! Head facing forward: check! No hands: check! White boarder all around head: check! So you can imagine my consternation when I proudly showed it to Regis and he was like, 'We can't use that photo!' 

Me: What? Why not?

Regis: He looks like he had a rough night at a frat party the night before! Look at that hair and that baby acne and the hoodie?!  Also he has more chins than a chinese phonebook! (This is one of my husband's favorite jokes....You see what I put up with on a regular basis?)

At which point I promptly told him where he could shove it. 

Just kidding. I told him that I would love to have him submit some alternate photos and we could choose the best one. We went with my photo, shown below. Because there were no alternate photos. Nate will just have to spend the next 5 years looking like a party animal frat boy. We'll be sure to save it to compare to the photo he takes in his college years.

Stage Fright

This past Friday, Adrienne had her end-of-the-year party at her school. This was celebrated by a pot-luck reception with the parents, where the kids perform a song and dance and receive their certificates of completion. Regis and I were both a little bit excited to see Adrienne with her class because 1. She is a bit of a ham on a day-to-day basis and 2. We could see her 'practicing' songs and dances from school and wanted to know what these were. So when the big day arrived, the teachers escorted the parents to chairs on one half of the room facing the kid's chairs on the other side of the room. Adrienne was only separated from us for mere moments before you could see the stage fright kicking in. I can't hardly blame her for being nervous considering what the parent's side of the room must have looked like. I mean, there were more cameras and flashes going off  and people shouting 'Hey (insert child's name here), look over here!' than at a live news conference. It must be intimidating to stare into that wall of lenses and frantically waving, attention seeking parents. Needless to say, Adrienne didn't even so much as flub her performance as she did outright fail. There were some tears and a mad dash to daddy's arms and that was the end of it. The more Regis encouraged her to join her classmates, the louder she cried and harder she hugged on to him. Not to worry, however, because Adrienne made a swift recovery once the announcement came that we could hit the food table. At this point, she promptly ditched us and found other non-suspecting adults that are much easier to persuade using her big-blue-eyed coy-faced request for "More cookies, please?" We did manage to get one photo of Adrienne and her class-mates. I am definitely thinking this is one for the photo albums, no?

Thanksgiving

Seeing as I am in a bit of a turkey coma, I will keep this post brief. This Thanksgiving, I am very grateful for having these three in my life, even if they do drive me a little crazy by never opening their eyes for photos...

I am extra thankful this year for my daughter, who turned 2 this thanksgiving. She has a big personality, an even bigger heart, and makes me laugh every day. I believe she thought that the Thanksgiving dinner we went to was in honor of her birthday and she likely ate her weight in dessert today. So definitely her best birthday yet!

Finally, we are thankful for all the wonderful people in our lives and hope you have a wonderful and delicious Thanksgiving!

In the line of fire

I find that I get the most interesting questions being a mommy here in Singapore. Granted I haven't been a mommy in the USA, so maybe these are typical questions every mommy gets while going about their business. I'll let you decide:

The first question, which I think I have mentioned before, is almost always the ice-breaker to conversation when someone approaches you and your baby: Girl/Boy? Now, actually, I don't mind this question so much when babies are like Nate's age. It is hard to tell if newborn babies are girls or boys by their looks. Actually, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it's a legitimate question for the first 6 months of a baby's life. It IS embarrassing to get stuck in that, 'Oh, my, what a beautiful girl!' and have the parent's respond, 'He's a boy.' But really, after 6 months or so, most babies seem to take on observable gender-defining qualities. When in doubt, take 5-10 seconds to consider the clothing baby-in-question is wearing. You should probably be able to figure it out. People still ask me if Adrienne is a girl or a boy and she is an adorable and girlish 2 years old. However, maybe there is something genuine (although stupid) to this question from the person asking. I was actually out at the park today with both Adrienne and Nate when some Auntie stopped to ask if Nate was a boy or a girl. I responded with 'He's a boy' and she replied, 'Oh, how nice that you have 2 boys!' while gesturing at Adrienne and Nate. And, unlike yesterday, Adrienne was wearing her own clothes (a purple butterfly shirt, in this instance) and not the future clothes of her little brother. It makes me wonder how two people can stare at the same thing and see it so differently....

Another question that I get frequently is, 'Are you breastfeeding/Is the baby breast-fed?' OK, yes, I do breastfeed my babies and I am not particularly shy about it. I think it is natural and healthy, and frankly I am WAY to lazy to have to organize sterile and temperature-appropriate bottles at all hours of the day. However, for some reason this seems like a bit of a personal question for strangers to be asking when they are looking at your baby. Whether you do or don't breastfeed your babies, you have reasons for your decision that you may not want to share with every stranger that you run into on the street. 

My absolute favorite question I got yesterday while poking around our building with the babes. An elderly auntie stopped us to look at Nate, then looked at Adrienne, and back at Nate. 'Same father?' She asks me skeptically, pointing back and forth between the two. Let me repeat it for emphasis: SAME FATHER?? What kind of question is that?? I was so caught off guard that I lamely replied with an 'Ahhh....Yeah'. But now I have thought of all the better and snarky ways I could have answered, like: Ya, I think so.... or Hmmm, I'm not really sure who either of their daddy's are.... Lets be clear about something: if breastfeeding hovers on the grey area of being too personal, certainly strangers inquiring of the paternal heritage of your children leaps across the line of appropriateness. 

Anyway, I was looking at old pictures and I really think there should be no question that these two babies are made from the same gene pools.  The first is a picture of Adrienne at around 4 weeks sitting on my lap. The second is Nate at the same age sitting on my lap. What do you think, see any similarities??

Love Bug

I swear, this guy can do this all day long. What a little love bug!!

Cheeky

Adrienne is quite the cheeky one. We sort of knew she was going to be spirited all along, but it's really coming out now that she is more-fully developing her language. And, boy, does she love using certain words. Like 'NO!' for instance. She probably got this from her father, but she basically says 'NO!' to anything you think she should be doing. For example, the other day I was giving her a bath and saying,

Adrienne, can I soap your hair?  'NO!' Your arms? 'NO!' Your back? 'NO!' Your feet? 'NO!'

Seeing as this conversation was going nowhere quickly, I decided to change it up a little.
Adrienne, what's your favorite word? (thinking it would be 'NO!') And without missing a beat, she yells, 'ICE CREAM!'  Well, at least she is still actually listening at this point and she definitely gets that sentiment from her mother!

If 'Ice cream' is her favorite word, her second favorite word is something along the lines of 'Bubba'. We in the Covey household know that she means 'Peppa' (as in Peppa Pig). She wakes up asking for Peppa and proceeds to ask for her continuously at regular intervals throughout the day. No matter what you are doing, she has 'Bubba' in the back of her mind. Like we might take her swimming, and in the middle of splashing and frolicking in the water, it's 'Bubba? Bubba?'. I wonder if this is a question like, 'Remember that episode that Peppa went swimming?' (Of course I remember, I've seen it like 500 times!) or a question like 'Can we please leave the swimming pool immediately even though I am having a great time so I can watch an episode of Peppa?'. Anyway, when we watch Peppa Pig, I always warn Adrienne when it's the last episode in a weak attempt to avoid the inevitable meltdown that will follow. So I tell Adrienne, 'Ok, this is the LAST one. Only ONE more. (Holding up my finger here to demonstrate a ONE). ONE more.... Adrienne, how many more are we going to watch?' Then she'll look up at me with her big blue eyes and reply cheekily, 'TWO!!'. 

Speaking of two, Adrienne's second birthday is next week. Thanksgiving day, to be exact. I've been trying to teach her how to hold up 2 fingers for her second birthday. She can do this with help, but if you ask her unassisted, she will always hold up 3 fingers. And not the first 3 fingers but the A-OK hand symbol (you know, pinkie, ring, middle fingers up, pointer and thumb in O shape). So, our little cheeky monkey, I guess you'll just have to verbalize the "TWO!" and that will have to be A-OK for us.

Bad design makes bad neighbors

Apartment living is interesting in so many ways. I sort of thought by now I would be beyond apartment living. Although, I also never thought I would be living in Singapore. Plus I don't have a spare 8-10K a month that it would cost me to live in a house around here. So apartment living it is. Which is not all bad, really. For example, we get security at the entrance to our building, the availability without maintenance of a pool, no grass to mow... We also lucked out and got a top floor apartment, which means you can't have crazy loud neighbors pounding around over-head (I sort of suspect WE might be those neighbors to the floor below us). But the architectural design of our building is...unusual. For example, the designer's managed to create a building where 90% of the apartments get full-on afternoon sun blaring into their apartment. Have I mentioned it's hot here? Every. Single. Day. I guess the joke is on us since we moved into the building called SUN Plaza.

Another fun design about our particular unit is that our bedroom windows look directly onto the patio of the floor below us. Which is interesting because you could be changing into your pajamas and they could be having a dinner party on the patio and all of a sudden they have new party entertainment. This is hypothetical; it has NEVER happened. Seriously. But only because they are not the dinner-party-throwing type. Curtains can be utilized to avoid the Peeping Tom affect, but keeping your curtains closed all day is a little too hermit-esk for us. So as an additional measure, we thought it would be nice to plant some trees in the bays outside our window. That way our windows are sort of covered and we can open the curtains to enjoy the daylight. Being in Asia and because they are so eco-friendly, we opted for bamboo trees to fill the space. They look quiet lovely, right?

 

A few weeks after planting the bamboo trees, we had a visit from our downstairs neighbor who was complaining that large amounts of leaves were being shed onto his patio. Would we mind getting rid of the trees and replacing them with something else? A few points to remind you of before you think we are terrible neighbors. 1. We had just invested a not-insignificant monetary amount to buy our trees 2. We had also invested some time and energy in planting and caring for the trees and 3. We really liked the way they looked outside our window. But not wanting to be completely disagreeable, we offered to move the trees so long as our neighbor would buy us replacement plants of equal value. This offer was met with a scowl and a huff and a rapid retreat back to his apartment. A few weeks later, our neighbor returned for a similar conversation. To which he gave the same complaints and we gave him the same offer of moving the plants if he bought replacement trees for us. We thought the issue was likely over  once he again refused to pay for replacement plants. 

However, not too long after that second conversation, we started hearing loud construction and drilling outside our bedroom window. We started to peek down at what was going on with curiosity. Is he building a roof for this patio? Sure enough, up went an awning that covered from our bedroom windows to about mid-way over his patio. I guess an alternate solution to us getting rid of the trees is for him to cover the patio. As is turned out, the awning did little for relieving the falling-leaf-on-patio problem. The leaves would drop onto the awning until the slightest breeze would come up, at which point they would be blown off onto the second half of his patio. Truthfully we thought very little about this as it was occurring since it wasn't really a problem for us. We did get the general feeling that he didn't like us, because occasionally we would end up on the same elevator and he would either give us a death-glare or just pretend we didn't exist. But, given what I know now, I sort of imagine these leaves driving our neighbor mad. You know, like, he walks out to his patio and a shedding leaf floats down into his unkept hair and he nearly goes apoplectic. Or the sound of walking on dry leaves during his evening smoke break makes him want to burn his ears off. This sort of crazy.

I say this because, after several years, he has finally enacted his revenge. This first started the week that we brought Nate home. We noticed construction noises and loud drilling. From around noonish until 3 pm. Which happens to directly span our daughter's naptime. Such that during our most fragile transition to a family of four and extreme lack of sleep, our daughter was unable to take her much-need nap and we were unable to have the couple hours of daytime reprieve. You may think this is a coincidence but I tell you that working from noon-3pm is the WORST time to work in Singapore and most construction halts for siesta. Point 1 for neighbor. Then, when we saw what he was building, we were even more appalled. He was adding an extention to the previous awning so that there are no cracks over his patio for the much loathed leaves to fall through. But instead of starting completely over and doing a nice roof, he just threw together the second half complete with different materials and color. So the upshot is a very unsightly, ghetto-looking awning that we stare down on from our bedroom window. Point 2 for neighbor. And finally, the added twist to the revenge plot we didn't discover until the next rainstorm. Rain hitting that new awning is loud. Really loud. It sounds like a thousand tin drums playing outside our window. What an evil genius! Point 3 for neighbor.

Finally, I would just like to say that, although we are losing this battle at the moment, we may get the last laugh after all. Which is, of course, that we are mere renters and will hopefully be leaving in the not too distant future. The trees will probably go with our departing, but he will be stuck with a mis-matched covering that can't be any quieter from the other side of the awning.