This morning we all walked over to the Mexican passport office to see if maybe we could speed things up a bit. Last week they told us they were now doing it by appointment and we couldn’t get in until the 31st. We leave for the States the next day, so it would have been of little use. Then we found out that even if we did get them ordered the office would only hold them for ten days. After that we’d have to drive to Tepic to pick them up ourselves. Anyway, none of that was going to work, so we just went in to see what they’d say if we told them our story.

As so often happens when you smile and talk nice, the rules got bent and they said they’d go ahead and do our paperwork today, meaning we’ll have the kids’ passports before we leave. Cool.

So everything was progressing in typical Mexican bureaucratic fashion, i.e. slowly and with total dedication to dotting every i and crossing every t, when we finally reached the fingerprinting stage.

Lowe is one, and he hates to have his fingernails clipped. If he’s still extremely groggy from just being plucked out of bed you might get five fingers done before he realizes what you’re up to. And to him finger printing had all the hallmarks of fingernail clipping. He was having none of it. Screaming, tears, the works. But he’s only one so he’s easy to manhandle when necessary and we were able to get it done rather quickly. I say easy to manhandle, but the truth is it took Ali pressing him to her body on her lap, me squeezing his arm tight enough to turn it purple, and the paperwork lady using two hands to uncoil one finger at a time.

As we were physically assaulting Lowe I looked up to see a horrified look on Ouest’s face as she backed up across the room and bumped into the wall. No exaggeration, she looked just like a bad actor in a horror movie watching her brother being chopped up with an ax. She didn’t run, just sort of levitated. I laughed and tried to reassure her that everything was fine, blah, blah.

Five minutes later it was her turn.

“No me Papa,” she said while shrinking away from her menacing father.

“Come on Ouest, it’s just paint, it doesn’t hurt. This is the last thing and then we can go home.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

What the hell just happened here? Two and a half hours into this ordeal and with light at the end of the tunnel Ouest was screaming bloody murder over fingerprinting?

She screamed and screamed with tears and snot running down her face. Keep in mind this is a twelve by twelve foot cement block room with four office workers and a lineup of customers at the door. Ouest didn’t care one bit about the scene, she was screaming for her life.

I took her outside and thought I could get her under some semblance of control. Not really. Back inside we went. More screams. The lady was looking really uncomfortable and it was clear that she had never once gotten this reaction from a kid. It’s not like she was one of those poor ladies who administer vaccines with big needles all day long. She had a stamp pad and a piece of paper with ten boxes to fill. That’s all.

Screaming was continuing with no end in sight so I peeled loose a finger, used my last ounce of energy to wrestle the arm forward, got an index finger on the ink pad, and pressed down on a blank piece of paper.

Silence. Like, “Well why didn’t you guys tell me that was all it was.”

We then moved quickly to stamp her fingers down on that piece of paper while a few more loose cries escaped between snot filled sniffles. And then we were done.

If I had a picture of this incident I would title it, simply, WTF.

I forget sometimes that she’s only two and doesn’t know everything ahead of time. Everything is new. Even fingerprints. And because she’s two she still does all of those really cute two-year-old things too.

Tonight she started singing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, but she can’t just leave it with the stars because, well, what about the moon. So whenever we sing Twinkle, twinkle, little star, we have to add, and moon too. It throws off the whole song, but that doesn’t matter because both the stars and the moon twinkle dammit.

And then there’s Lowe. Man is he a sweet little boy. There is a room in this condo we don’t want him in, but the doorknob is busted, so he can just push his way in. To combat this we’ve put a chair in front of it. That doesn’t stop him. But to keep us from getting angry with him, after he pushes the chair out of the way, he turns to us and waves goodbye with a giant smile on his face. We are helpless to do anything but wave goodbye back.

And tonight when he heard music he started dancing. Real dancing. Spinning around in circles while doing a double time jig with his little legs and feet. All the while laughing and smiling. The kid is contagious.