Getting the SS card and birth certificate were super easy...or a lot easier than I thought! I guess I thought the process was going to be tougher than it really was. Also, it was really easy for me because Kyle's the one who filled out the paperwork. He will maintain, though, that it was the worst amount of paperwork that he's ever had to fill out as far as supplying your own information goes. That's because the packet of information is like 10 pages long! Thankfully, since Kyle and I (a) live together and (b) are married, that made the process a lot easier for him and the birth certificate lady at the hospital. You get to skip the last two pages of the packet if mother and father are married and live together!
We got Audrey's SS card in the mail within a week of bringing her home from the hospital. The birth certificate had to be picked up, so I only just got around to getting it a MONTH after she was born! The Health Department Office is only open until 3:30 Monday through Friday, so Kyle was never able to go get it. *Sigh. What a bummer...I had to get off the couch and get dressed in real clothes to get this thing! I'd truly meant to get it earlier, but after having a kid, I realize that there actually are lots of conditions to getting things done on time (or, more importantly, getting places on time!). First of all, there are very few days where I'm showered that early! Also, Audrey is usually eating/napping/crying frequently until early afternoon, and when she's not, I'm pumping! Then, on the days we do happen to get the feeding/napping/pumping out of the way and we're both dressed, it's because we have to go somewhere else! This is usually the doctor's office and the appointments run past 3:30. Add to that the fact that I ALSO had to be sure to have cash (which I never carry), and it seemed like the conditions were never right!
At any rate, we finally got there, and we got both the normal-sized document as well as a little Audrey-sized one:
I had no idea what this is for...Kyle tells me it's to keep like in a bag or something? In case you take your kid out of the country? I guess. When do kids even NEED to get a passport, anyway?
One interesting caveat of the SS card and birth certificate...
...if you look closely (but it's too small in the picture), you'll notice there's no accent over Éowyn. That's because the Social Security office, the Health Department, as well as the BMV, no longer put accents over letters of names. So LEGALLY Audrey's name is Audrey Eowyn Byard.
Is it a big deal in the long run? Not really. It's just the way things are. Actually, we'd discussed this possibility before naming her, so it wasn't at all surprising. Because that's the way things are done, people are very understanding of the fact that an accent truly exists there even if it's not documented. Does it bug me? A little. It bugs me just a little because the accent is PART of her name! So I keep looking at this stuff and I feel like they got her name wrong. I feel for all the Renées and Lópezes and everyone else who has an accent in their names somewhere and has had to deal with this for even longer. We've been instructed that for official documents, doctor's forms, school registration, etc. that we have to leave the accent off to provide consistency. How dumb! But, I'd hate to mess something up for Audrey in the future and cause some sort of problem for her that she'd have to work out as an adult.
On the bright side, the birth certificate lady said she loved the name and that she hadn't seen anything like it. I guess she would know!
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