Wiscon or Society of Behavioral Medicine?

[rivka]

Michael and I talked a little bit about going to Wiscon tonight. We are still thinking.

The big conference in my field is being held in Montreal this year, at the end of April. I would like to go, and if I go, my grant will pay for my plane ticket and hotel room and other expenses. The rest of the family would come along too, at our personal expense.

I don't think it makes economic or practical sense to do two family trips by airplane in two months, with a very young baby.

An issue with Montreal is that, traveling by air, we would all have to have passports. Even the Niblet, who should be about ten weeks old at the time. Which would mean trying to get usable passport pictures for a newborn (the rules about what constitutes an acceptable photo are stringent), and scrambling to get the official birth certificate from the state and the passport application pushed through. That sounds complicated.

Once in Montreal, the Niblet would probably attend SBM with me, nursing and sleeping in the sling, while Michael and Alex hung out with papersky. We could all hang out with papersky in the evenings. If I were scheduled to give a talk (hopefully I would be, about my new research), Michael would take the Niblet while I was speaking. I would be able to network.

If we go to Wiscon, we wouldn't need passports. More of our friends would be there. The Niblet would be a month older, and I seem to recall that there can be a big sanity difference between a 10-week-old and a 14-week-old. We'd have to pay for everything - no billing the grant - and obviously, there would be no professional advantages. It would probably be a hell of a lot of fun.

I am tentatively leaning towards making a Wiscon hotel reservation now, just in case, and making the final decision about where to go after I find out if SBM would want me to give a talk, or not. If they just want me to present my research as a poster, it would have a lot less appeal.

Questions about Wiscon:

1. Are you going?
2. If we wait to buy memberships until January, are they likely to be sold out?
3. How hard is it to sell or transfer memberships in the late winter or early spring?
4. Is it at all possible to arrange for adjoining hotel rooms in case, say, you want to share after-the-kids-are-asleep monitoring duty with another family?
5. If (4) is possible, would you be interested?
6. Would you look askance at someone who brought a sleeping baby in a sling to a room party?

Questions about Montreal:

7. Has anyone here ever gotten a passport for an infant? How hard was it to arrange?
8. Is it insane to think about bringing an infant to a professional conference? I've seen other people do it, but I don't know how good of a conference experience they had. Obviously I wouldn't let the Niblet cry in a lecture room, or anything.

Questions about both:

9. Is it insane to think about traveling 600-1000 miles with a preschooler and a small infant and all staying together in one hotel room?

Comments

[geminigirl]

When we thought we were going to Canada this summer, we applied for Naomi's passport just about as soon as it was possible for us to do it. I had a difficult time finding a place to do passport photos for an infant, though it turned out that the post office that we go to to do passports would do them for us. (I ended up getting them done at Sears because I didn't know about the post office.)

It wasn't particularly complicated...the application was available on line, I printed it out, filled it out, and all three of us went to the post office-both parents have to be present to get the passport.

I think going to get her birth certificate (which I did in person, in order to expedite things) was probably more annoying than the passport process, mostly cause Naomi was fussing the day we did that, whereas she slept through most of the post office experience.

We got her passport about three weeks after we applied. You might want to plan to pay the expediting fee...while most of them are taking less than six or eight weeks right now, I'd hate to see you scrambling just days before the trip to make sure that you had a passport for Niblet.

[annaoj.livejournal.com]

1. Oh, I'm going. Also, I'm co-chairing programming.
2-3. I'm not sure of the actual membership numbers right now; but even last year, we weren't sold out in January. Also, there's a fair amount of turnover, in terms of people who figure out they can't go and then they either transfer their memberships to friends, or get refunds from the con and those memberships go to people on the waiting list. betsy might know more than me about how full childcare is at this point.
4. Not sure; but I think people do manage to.
5. I generally roomshare with 3 people, with some overlap each year, but no kids. So, n/a.
6. My friend Jen tinyhand brought her 6-month-old to parties in a sling this last WisCon, with no askance looks.

I'm *not* sure what the current state of the hotel is, in terms of the room block being "sold out"; definitely call instead of using the website. I know there's been a certain amount of people reserving more rooms than they themselves need, just in case, so there will certainly be a brisk business in hotel room transfers closer to the con. It might be the case that you make a reservation at rack rate, and can get someone's block rate reservation later. We're still working out kinks with the new hotel management (as of last year) in terms of things like room block waiting lists.

...

9. I know people who do this for WisCon every year, and don't think it's insane. But I don't have any direct experience.

[naomikritzer]

I am planning to go to WisCon. Memberships will probably still be available in January, but it's probably safer to just buy them now and plan to sell them if need be. (Selling memberships is very easy.) Also, you'll want childcare (it's EXCELLENT, provided by day care professionals, and free or nearly-free) and you should sign up for that ASAP, it fills before the memberships sell out.

Definitely go ahead and book hotel rooms now. I have no idea whether adjoining rooms are available, but ESPECIALLY if you want something like that, book now.

No one looks askance at sleeping babies at room parties. Sometimes people look mildly askance at obviously overtired preschoolers whose parents don't want to take them up and put them to bed because then they'd have to leave the party.

I have gotten a passport for an older infant. It was a PITA. First I couldn't find anywhere to do the photo. Then I found a passport issuing site that did them, but it was the big government center where you take a number and wait for a couple of hours. Ed had to sign a notarized statement giving me permission to get her a passport, since he wouldn't be present to apply for it. After all that, we almost weren't able to get it because Molly, who was normally incredibly mellow and friendly, freaked out completely and a passport photo of a CRYING baby is apparently Not Acceptable. A disgruntled baby is OK, though, and she did eventually calm down. But the requirements of size, angle, etc. are very specific and getting my older kids to cooperate was difficult enough, never mind an infant.

After all that, have we EVER taken them abroad? No. We have not. Despite having a friend in the foreign service who'd have put us up in Beijing! Flying is just too damn expensive right now to go anywhere interesting.

Oh, and:

9. Is it insane to think about traveling 600-1000 miles with a preschooler and a small infant and all staying together in one hotel room?

We travel by plane every year to visit Ed's family. It's not that big a deal. I mean, it is a pain in all sorts of ways but it's do-able.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

Charlie got his passport when he was a couple of weeks old, and the only difficult part was the photo. As you say, the baby has to be Not Crying, and also awake. Every time we took Charlie out of the house at that age, in his sling, the movement of walking put him to sleep, and every time he woke up, he cried. We had a whole series of unfruitful photo sessions. Finally we had a brainstorm: we took his photo at home with a digital camera while he was lying on the bed on a white sheet. (It was at 3am, as that was the time of day he was in the best mood at that age.) The photo center then edited our photo to fit passport specifications. It worked like a charm.

Since then I've met several other families who have done the same thing: taken a home photo and had it professionally readjusted.

The nutty thing is that a baby passport is good for years, and in a few months, your kid will look nothing like the picture on the passport! Ah, bureaucracy...

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

It is no harder to get an infant's passport than it is to get anyone else's. The paperwork is just the same, only a parent signs instead of the baby.

When I took wee tiny baby #1 to have his photo taken, I feared I'd somehow have to hold him up, but they just laid a piece of white board down on the floor, and I laid the baby on it, and they snapped the pic.

[trope.livejournal.com]

We traveled to the UK with Bonzo when he was twelve weeks old, and the passport process was not as intimidating as I'd feared. You don't need a SSN (despite what some of the paperwork might tell you) but you do need both parents to be present (or the second parent to sign and notarize a form) to prevent, erm, unauthorized vacations with the wee ones. That wasn't tough for us because Bonzo was our only, but with a toddler it might be annoying.

We did expedite the passport, just in case, and did go in person to get the birth cert.

And I *really* wish we'd had a sensible photographer, like the one described in the previous poster's comment--everyone kept trying to hold the kiddo up, and it was absolutely the most grueling part of the process!

The travel itself was exhausting but not impossible (eight hours on plane, tube ride, three hours on train, then a wedding, then reverse the process). I don't know from professional conferences, so I'm no help there. I tend to think that when you have an infant that young all bets are off, so you could go to whichever one made you happy or neither at all.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

1: yes
2: we don't usually sell out until later in the spring; i wouldn't worry until march.
3: easy peasy.
4: there are certainly adjoining hotel rooms; if you have a hotel room and someone else has a hotel room, it seems as if it should be possible to have them be adjoining. i have not tried same.
5: it's a possibility; i have a membership for ltbnl, but i do not know whether or not i will actually have the kidlet by wiscon. i do know someone who may have baby twins at the convention, though, and she might be interested.
6: not if they let me pet the baby.
9: no idea. let me know what your opinion on that is after you've done it. ;)

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I'll be there.

I haven't taken my kids, but it's very kid-friendly, even in the evenings, as long as your kid is not hulked out.

fairoriana took a baby with acid reflux to England for a week. My mom traveled with an infant and a toddler, alone, from Africa. I usually figure that I can hack domestic travel.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Didn't you travel some with Alex when she was tiny? If so, go read what you wrote about it, and see if that clarifies which to pick.

K.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I'll be there!
As I recall, there was a significant flurry of people who either had not booked adequately in advance or whose plans had changed and allowed them to go to Wiscon, seeking membership/hotel room transfers right up until practically the day before it started, on wiscon; or offering memberships/rooms they could no longer use and having them snapped up.

[ailbhe]

My babies' passport photos were taken with an adult kneeling on the floor, lap and hands under a white sheet, baby reclining on the lap, head steadied by adult hands. Linnea had a passport by 8 weeks, IIRC. Her British one is valid until she's FIVE.

I vote for using your and you family's travel spoons for dancing, as it were. But I always do.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I registered for Wiscon. FWIW.

I can't answer any of the other questions because they are out of range/experience for me. I've never even been to Wiscon.

N.

[firecat]

1. I'm planning to go to Wiscon if I can get a hotel room in the Concourse.
2. Wiscon won't be sold out in January but the nearby hotels might be.
3. Based on my reading of the wiscon group it is not at all hard to sell or transfer memberships. However, the year I had a membership and couldn't go, I donated it back to Wiscon instead.
4. Don't know.
5. No, I'm no good with kids.
6. As far as I am concerned, babies and children are welcome at room parties.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

I got a passport for Grey at about 3 - 4 months. (The picture is hilarious.) I think you'd pretty much have to apply for the passport the minute you got your SSN and even then you might have to pay for expedited service. The passport pictures are particular, but I actually took my own with my camera and cropped appropriately.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

As I let my passport lapse when I got sick and don't have kids, I can only offer a couple of bits of info:

a. The passport line at my post office is always really long, but that may be because it's usually Hispanics and the post office doesn't have translators.

b. I don't know about when you need a birth certificate immediately, but there is a very easy place (http://www.vitalchek.com/default.aspx) to get them online. The Washington state Department of Health actually referred me there. I got mine since I plan to bring a chair in to the post office some day and get a passport. You never know, I might have the money to go to Farthing Party some year.

[redbird]

I'm going to Wiscon; your other questions either have been answered, or I don't know the answers.

[carbonel]

I'll be at Wiscon.

I'd love to see you there, but if you're selected to give a talk, would SBM make more professional sense?