Child passport renewal: Progression of photos of under five's

Hi all, maybe this is common knowledge, but where we sat in the Embassy today there were at least three of us who were surprised to find out that we should have had with us a series of photos of our young children, to show how they'd progressed from the tiny under-five in their original passport photo to the bigger child they are now.

The agent at Window 1 printed the stuff off the web to prove that yes indeed it is clearly stated on the first page of the instructions on the London Embassy web page, but there are two problems with that: if you google your instructions, you sometimes get old web pages that haven't been removed, and also you can get instructions on what looks like the very reliable travel.gov site - which doesn't mention it at all.

Fortunatley we were able to cobble together a collection of photos out of my husband's wallet, which looked enough like each other to prove that she's our girl and has been all along, but it was a close thing for a little while, and just caused too much unnecessary stress.

So now you know! Hope that saves some others unnecessary trouble in the future! :-)

OMG, that must be brand new.

I renewed my eldest's passport in May and fortunately only had to have current photos of her!

Thanks for that.

We renewed my son's passport back in October and it clearly states about the photos on the embassy website where you have to download the documents and  make your appointment. I just threw in a few photos and they accepted it just fine. 

How do you make the appointment? 

How do you make the appointment? 

Question resolved.  My wife found it on the internet.  If anybody has the same question, just pm her or me.

Hi, I am a mother of 3 kids whose passports all need renewing, and whose original passports were all issued when they were only a few months old. I have read about this photo age progression thing on the embassy website, but it doesn't go into much detail; I have a couple of questions about it:

1) how many photos do I need? My eldest was 3 months when he had his last passport and is now almost 12 (we haven't been back for 8 years). Will about 1 per year be ok?

2) do they have to be passport-style photos? If so that is going to be impossible. We might have a few formal school shots, but not from the early years, so will they have lost their citizenship?

Actually now I think about it I have a 3rd  question:

3) do they have to be "proper" photos on photo paper etc., or will printing some out of Picasa be OK?

If someone on here has done this recently I would be glad of some advice, thanks!

Rache

I'm certain the kids won't have "lost their citizenship" over a few photos!

Haven't had to do it myself yet but I'd imagine regular wallet pics or snapshots should be fine, it's just to show age progression not to be used in the new passports.

One a year will suffice. School pics usually are the best way to go. Wallet size is fine or whatever you have is fine as well...they don't have to be passport size. Even if you have them stored digitally and then just print them off...those are fine as well as long as you can date them accordingly.

Thanks! Sorry I haven't been on here in a few days. I will bring the school photos for the eldest. It is the youngest two (who are twins) who are going to be trickier - we never seemed to have a hand free for all those baby shots! Fortunately my mum has (of course) a stash of her own (in albums and beautifully dated) so I think we can certainly come up wit hone a year!

Thanks again!

Rachel

Just did the registry of birth, SSN, passport application and passport renewal all in one go. They seem to only be offering 8, 8:30 and 9am appointments now, you have to book it online.

http://london.usembassy.gov/cons_new/acs/passports/fta.html

It's such a pain to do and to keep up - especially since they don't offer renewals by post. But it's worth it in the end.

My son's US passport expired, but we haven't gotten to the Embassy yet to do it.  He was born in the States, so I wouldn't think it would be a problem to go a few months after it has expired.  However, reading some of your stories, I am not so sure!

Has anyone else done this?

Thank you.

Personally I wouldn't let it lapse, but that's me being paranoid about sudden emergency trips to the states.

When you apply at the Embassy, do you get the passport that same day?

I think it is posted to you.

DD is 7 & DS is 11 & both are up for renewal. We've made our appt for a couple of weeks from now. I didn't know we had to bring multi-photos! Glad I stumbled onto this thread!

Question, DH says we can't take ANY phones or portable devices with us into the embassy - anyone know a locker we can stash these things? I'd hate to have to leave them miles away in our car just for this appointment. Anyone else experience this? I was hoping we could just turn them off.