Taking the Oath tomorrow - my experience & couple of questions

[Little_My 464]

Finally, after an immigration journey that started originally in 2009 with a student visa and has since continued through AOS, ROC and eventually naturalization, I will be taking the Oath of Allegiance in Brooklyn tomorrow. We had a few hiccups along the way with the N-400, so I thought I'd share my experience - and also had a few logistical questions.

Questions first: We have a 5-month old baby, and him and my husband will be coming to the ceremony with me. My understanding however is that the whole process takes quite a long time, as the first part will include all the paperwork, handing over our greencards etc - would you advice my husband and baby to come a bit later? I need to report at the Court house at 8:30am, and according to some experiences I've been reading online, the whole thing could take even 4-5 hours.. does anyone have a recent experience from Brooklyn to share?

Then about my experience. I had my interview in NYC on 3 November, and traveled abroad from 13 December to 12 January. I hadn't received any correspondence from USCIS by our trip, so I had my neighbor (whom I trust and am close with) check our mail and she had agreed to open any letters from USCIS and email me about their contents. On 19 December, as an early Christmas gift, she emailed me with a scanned copy of the acceptance letter with a request to appear at the Oath ceremony on 9 January - which was before we were going to return to US from Finland, where we were for the holidays. I wrote a letter, according to the instructions, explaining our situation with a copy of our e-ticket, and my neighbor mailed it back with the Oath letter. USCIS received the letter a couple of days later.

Come January 26, I received a letter stating that I failed to appear at my "interview on your application for Naturalization on 29 September 2014" and that I have 30 days to explain why.. so clearly a totally wrong letter, given that I had my interview on 3 November, had appeared, and had been approved.. I called the customer service, and was connected to a second tier agent. She seemed to be extremely impatient and annoyed, and at first thought I was just not understanding the letter - and it took me a while to get her to realize that they had sent me the wrong letter template. She ended up saying "Well, mistakes happen, we'll send you a new one - goodbye" - and hung up. Lovely customer service.

All's well that ends well I guess - 1.5 weeks later I received a new notice to appear for the Oath Ceremony, this time on Friday 20 February. I cannot wait for tomorrow - not only will it be amazing to finally become a US citizen (I'm maintaining my Finnish citizenship too, so I will be dual) but I am also SO HAPPY to be done with USCIS once and for all!

Good luck to all of you still in the midst of the process - it's a long road, but well worth it once you reach the end!