DTC

That's adoption talk for "Dossier to China". We just heard from our agency confirming ours went on June 24, 2005. It will be translated and then logged into the system at CCAA, the Chinese adoption agency, where it will slowly move from the review room to the matching room..

No one really knows what goes on there, but there are rumors abound. Some say they scan your pictures into a computer and try to match up parents and children that have similar characteristics. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but just to be sure, I refused to send Arny's official passport picture which made him look like a drug crazed serial killer. You see, in addition to the regular pictures (full body shots, picture of "the baby's room", front of apartment building, playgrounds, etc), we had to send two passport sized pictures for use with the documents. I called the agency to see if they had to be official passport pictures. Luckily they didn't. I took some pictures in the apartment where he didn't look drug crazed or killer like and sent those.

The whole picture thing becomes an obsession. You are required to send pictures of you and your home, so the Chinese officials can get a sense of who you are and the kind of environment you live in. For example, you need a picture of where the baby will sleep. Now, if you have a house and an extra room and have already completely furnished the room, which some people have done, the Chinese officials will get a clear sense of the "baby's room". If, like us, you live in a NYC apartment, you have a room, fully furnished with not a stitch of baby furniture and you throw some stuffed animals (taken from work) on the trundle bed and take a picture of that with a caption "the crib will go here". And then you stand there thinking "where am I going to put all this stuff?" Ahhh, the wonders of apartment living!!