Where is home?

Seb came home yesterday all full of energy "we´re going home for Christmas!" He often says things lately like "I´m going to China on Thursday" or "I have to meet the suppliers in Brazil" and then he either goes or doesn´t depending on the whims of his job. I´ve taken to turninng a deaf ear to him. This time though it looks promising. We seem to have worked out the baby´s passport issue and the cat sitter and it seems we will be leaving this weekend for Christmas in France. I´m still waiting before I get really excited. After all we still don´t have the passport in our hands but we have a lot of hope.

We actually had lots of options--the choice between three passports. We opted for the Mexican one for her for now. It takes a few weeks to get a French passport nd of course we have to declare her birth via the embassy first--more paperwork. And we know just how slow the French can be with this sort of stuff even if they say it only takes a short time. The Americans are pretty fast and dependable by comparison but the declaration of birth and passport for babies born in Mexico to expats? The list of proof needed is at least twenty items long. I´m still a little flabbergasted. Just short of driving to the embassy in Monterry with my placenta I have to prove my entire pregnancy with pictures, documents and affidavits. It´s a crazy hoop jumping contest. When we got Little S his US citizenship in Paris we basically strolled in with two items and the baby. This is a whole other affair. You won´t be getting any fake babies past the American embassy here in Mexico. But anyway, the Mexican passport? It takes less than one day to get so we very wisely opted for that one. If only all of us could choose between three different ones. Charlotte is a very lucky little chickadee.

The passport office was interesting: --dirty like all the government offices, men in cowboy hats and boots, a man in a cockfighting baseball cap with a huge bird on it with a name (the champion in 2006 obviously), raven haired kids darting everywhere, a man with gold teeth selling ice cream sandwiches, people staring at us with Little Ss blonde locks and the new baby, "you need more photocopies" being barked at us at each kiosk, the demand for official pictures of the baby (which we paid for and which were actually worse) then the rejection of the "better ones" because ours were better after all, waiting with other mothers and being asked--"where are you from? (where indeed--the US, France...and here in Mexico all correct) and "how old is the baby (a month...no really just a month...yes I´m sure...yes yes she´s grande) and having my passport kidnapped by the agent for 30 minutes while she disappeared upstairs somewhere (suspicious). Like I said it was an interesting morning!

So yes we are going home which may not feel like home anymore come to think of it.