Writing -- Baby Talk: Passports

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 12 January 2005 issue.

It's happened… we've officially taken leave of our senses.

The flights are booked and in about eight weeks time we'll all be winging our way to Australia. Our trip will last just over two months and will see us dragging the twins, their little sister and all of the associated paraphernalia on and off eight different flights in all - that's right, eight! I remember reading somewhere that when you become a parent you're in it for the long haul, but I don't think this was quite what they had in mind.

Flying with children is never easy. Before the kids arrived we tended to travel by the seat of our pants - booking things last minute, arriving at the check-in with minutes to spare, landing in strange cities in the dead of night with no accommodation booked… that sort of thing. Hopping on a plane - any plane - used to be laced with the promise of new adventures. Now it's just a headache!

First things first though… we needed to work out an itinerary. Our plan was to travel to Australia via Southeast Asia. You have to admit that the thought of spending a week or so languishing on a tropical beach before arriving in the hubbub of Sydney has a certain appeal. Then the devastating tsunami rocked the region, and as the scale of the disaster sunk home our immediate instinct was to alter our travel plans.

But then we read an article that changed our minds. It argued that for a lot of the countries worst hit by the tsunami tourism forms a substantial part of their national economy. If western tourists desert the region now it could have serious economic implications for nations already struggling to come to terms with the tsunami disaster.

So, after thinking long and hard on the implications of it we've decided to stop in Bali. Indonesia was one of the countries worst hit by the Tsunami, but Bali, sitting towards the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, was completely unaffected. By visiting the island we'll do our little bit to support the Indonesian economy and hopefully have a great holiday to boot.

Next job… passports. Getting the girls to sit still and look at the camera for their passport photos was painful. They'd always look away, put their hands up or pull a funny face at the decisive moment. Thank goodness for digital cameras: I dread to think how much money we'd have had to pump into a photo booth to get suitable shots. With digital I just kept snapping until I had what I needed and deleted the rest. Perfect!

Now all we had to do was prove to the Passport Office that we are actually who we say we are, and that our children are really ours. After a frantic scramble to gather the necessary evidence we filled in the forms, and then everything had to be signed by a suitably dignified and trustworthy member of society - they even list suitable categories on the form.

I'm still trying to work out what makes a priest or a doctor a more upstanding citizen than say a farmer or a postman. They'll even accept signatures from lawyers and politicians for crying out loud… but let's not go there. In the end we all went traipsing into our local Garda station and got our applications witnessed by the duty officer there. The forms are in the post now - all we have to do is wait!