Epic Fail: Mexican Passport Edition

Why won't anyone give this kid a passport?

We just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to passports. Yesterday, Vlad, Jari and I went to San Vicente to get Jari's Mexican passport squared away only to return to the boat with a good dose of "what the heck do we do now," and it's all because of my name.

You see, in Mexico children take both their father's and mother's last names, and all paperwork reflects that custom. So the form that Vlad filled out in the hospital asked for my first name, my father's last name and my mother's last name. This form, which he was told was my admitting paperwork, is actually a very important piece of paper. It's the form upon which all of Jari's other paperwork is based in Mexico, and Vlad filled it out as it directed and yet also incorrectly.

To make matters even more confusing, my middle name is my mother's last name, so the lady at the birth certificate office was just baffled by me and wrote my name down as Attila Berry Loving instead of Attila Loving Berry on Jari's birth certificate. She was insistent that I have my mother's last name tacked on to my last name, and I went along with it, thinking that was just how they did it in Mexico. Add to this the fact that we had just had a really intense experience. I was recovering from a C-section and could barely walk, and we were adjusting to life with a week-old baby. So you can understand how this mistake went down. What's in a name anyway?

Now, however, thanks to a woman at the passport office, we see things differently. My actual name has to be the name on Jari's birth certificate, not the name that I would have if I had been born in Mexico, which is the humorous sounding Attila Loving Berry Loving. Nope, that's not how it's done. Had we been able to get Jari's passport started in Guadalajara, we could have fixed this mistake right away, but because he was two weeks late we just didn't have time.

So what to do about this latest international incident? The lady at the passport office suggested hiring a lawyer. Vlad thinks the simplest way is for me to change my name to Attila Berry Loving, which has a certain work around appeal. But I think we might have found our answer thanks to Jess and James, who had pretty much the exact thing happen to them. Because of a similar middle name/last name conundrum, they had to get Rocket's birth certificate amended, which basically means finding the right guy with the right stamp. (And you know how much we love stamps!) So our next adventure is finding the magical stamp man, and then maybe, just maybe, our kiddo will get a passport.