So we recently booked a trip to Ireland, the wife and I.

And we’re bringing the baby.

Calm down. I said calm down! Unless you’re booked on the same flights we’re on, I don’t want to hear any whining. I do want to hear any tips you might have about stuff to do in Ireland and your advice on traveling with an infant, so long as it’s not just “don’t.”

Planning a trip is hard enough without the parenting police chiming in. Planning a trip requires a lot of…planning. And even more when you’re dragging and infant along.

Including securing the proper documentation…

My kid isn’t even 7 months old at this point. He’ll be at about 8 months when we head to my mother’s mother’s mother’s homeland. He’s very much a baby, and will still be one when we take this trip.

Activity wise, it will be a little bit before he can stand and walk and start making that transition to the toddler phase. Physically he’s tall for his age, but other than that he looks like your typical Oh-My-God-He’s-Gorgeous type baby. Frankly, while I’m kind of surprised we have yet to be accosted by a talent scout, when it comes to looks there’s not that much that differentiates my son from countless other babies at this age.

And yet, we are required to furnish passport photos.

I couldn’t even pick my own kid out of a line-up at this point! What good are a couple of tiny headshots of his tiny head going to do custom officials at LaGuardia and whatever the airport in Ireland is called. Guinness International?

Yet MomandBuried dutifully took the little guy down to CVS anyway. And she did her best to both hold him up and bend herself out of the way so as to get a properly formatted passport photo that hasn’t been compromised by the presence of her hand on the the back of his head, or his fist in his mouth.

The rules of the passport game require that he’ll need a new photo in five years, but to be honest, at that point he may have already been stolen and switched with some Irish baby and I’m not positive I’d know the difference.

Let’s hope the people at Customs are well-trained in baby identification because if we get back to NYC with a different baby, someday down the line when we eventually realize it my wife is going to be PISSED.

If you’re curious, here’s the picture we secured for baby’s first passport: