Passports & Microtia

Everyone's US passport has expired (except for Micah's and that's because I haven't applied for one for him yet.)  Yesterday after taking Thea to the OLSAT testing and to soccer practice, we went to the UPS store to get new photos done. Then my evil plan is to send Steve's and my applications in to the Passport Agency and make an appointment with the post office in Princeton Junction to get the kids' passports done.

Right now Thea is in between haircuts, so her bangs are a little low and her hair is long enough to push behind her ears.  While in Maryland in February, Miss Tammy, who gave Thea her very first haircut, trimmed the bangs, but Thea's bobbed/wedged style is the creation of Miss Flo at Snip-Its. Her hair had to be forced behind the ears, in addition to slicking her bangs off to one side with a little water, so that her eyebrows and ears were visible in the photo.  It's a rule, according to the guy taking the pictures, so while we are satisfying whatever regulation the US government (the lovely people who brought you the Shut Down That Almost Was) has for biometric data, we have now a passport photo that looks absolutely nothing like my child.

And I won't even begin to bore you with mine, other than I would not use water on my bangs to get them out of the way, and the guy took about five shots before he got something he thought was acceptable.  (I was in "whatever will get it through the renewal process"-mode.  Do it, I look like this every day and there is precious little a UPS store clerk with a digital camera could do to make me look like Heidi Klum.)

What bothered me was that the photographer kept saying, I have to be able to see the ears.  OK, fine for Thea and me, that's a little bit of fussing and pushing to get hair out of the way.  Good luck seeing Micah's ears, looking at him face to face, you might see a bit of ear lobe off to the side, and then what to do about the BAHA.  People wear their eyeglasses in their passport photos, why shouldn't Micah wear his hearing aid?  To be safe, we had one set of with and one without done and we'll see what happens.