Ruben’s Twelfth Week

Ruben had a very exciting 12th week, he spent it in San Diego with his mum and Aunty Vanks. The official purpose of the visit was for mum to speak at a conference, for Ruben (and Aunty Vanks) it was mostly a big adventure and a bit of a holiday. Dad, unfortunately, was stuck at home, working hard.

In order to get away, we had to procure a passport for Master Murphy, which, as it turns out, is no mean feat and required making him an Australian citizen then getting his passport.

It was about 19hrs in transit – from home to hotel, including an 8ish hour flight from Gatwick to Minneapolis, and another three and a bit on to San Diego. Ruben was in fine form pretty much all the way and charmed the people who initially looked at us in terror as we approached them on the plane carrying a 12 week old baby.

The weather in San Diego was warm and sunny and gave Ruben the opportunity to get dressed up in short sleeves and show a bit of leg for the first time outdoors. He looked pretty gorgeous and very handsome. It was the first time that we ever had to worry about not getting him sunburned – which required investing in a hat and borrowing some SPF30 from Aunty Vanks, but was successfully achieved.

Although we mostly stayed pretty close by our hotel (the Marriott on Coronado Island) we did do a day trip into town and went to the San Diego zoo where Ruben got his sun hat and a v cute panda bib (a present from Aunty Vanks). We saw lots of primates, but Ruben wasn’t keen to queue to see the pandas so we missed seeing them.

One night we went out with all the other conference speakers to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Ruben fell asleep in the water taxi on the way over and didn’t stir until we were all the way home again.

He continued the sleeping theme on the way home – we were wondering if he could possibly be as good on the way home as he was on the way over… in fact, he was even better. After a snack as the plane took off, he was off to sleep, and pretty much stayed that way all through the flight home to London, and then again on the Gatwick Express for good measure.

Oh, but just as we were thinking we’d gotten all of the paperwork out of the way with citizenship and passports etc. we were held up at immigration on the way back into London – because Ruben doesn’t have a visa to stay here. They gave him a 2 month temporary visa (telling us that they were being *very* generous… seriously, what were they going to do? deport him? granny would have been thrilled if that had happened!) and now we have a whole bunch more paperwork to fill out, more passport photos to send off (thank goodness I got extra ones to start off with, this will be six that we’ve used up already!) and a whacking great £400 fee to pay so that he is legally entitled to live here. Eh, and to think we had thought it would be as simple as applying for a UK passport.

ps. yes, there are a couple of weeks missing… Ruben has been a little slack with updating his website. Don’t worry – we’re going to go back and get those done very soon! And put in some more photos.

pps. thanks to Aunty Vanks for the great photos (above). We haven’t gotten ours off the video camera yet!