Life

Bart Dam Backer

Born May 28th 2005
Son of Dam & Teresa Backer
Birth weight: 8 pounds 12 ounces (3.9Kg)

July 2007 - August 2007

Summer is here again. Just some random pictures from the first part of summer. We frequently go to Seaworld where Bart loves to watch the Shamu show. We also still have season tickets for the San Diego Zoo, Wildlife Park, Railroad Museum, Science Center and Aquarium. We spent a lovely summer everning watching the sunset with friends from work. We had a quick visit from Robert, Catherine and Cameron. Teresa and Margaret had an exciting party in LA. Bart continues to amaze us with his ability to throw lego pieces at high velocity from up amazingly close. Everything in our living room now has teeth marks. He can reach up to 46 inches (117cm) which is the exact hight of all the light switches in our house. His typical diet consists of Sushi, Aspergus, Tofu, Lasagna, Burrito's, Fish sticks, Vegie Dogs, Milk, Green Machine Juice, Carrot Juice, Applce Juice and Watermelon. He has had pizza only once but seems to like the word. He screams it in public in a way as if it is the only food we feed him, getting us some wonderful stares from other parents. He is really starting to speak now, we are up to 3 word sentences. Typically something deep like "Pappa, Elmo, please" followed by "Pappa, Elmo, Now" followed shortly by a little kid screaming and kicking on the floor. He looks so cute he can get away with murder. Just not with us. Most all of the time he is a darling though. He really eats Sushi.

April 2007 - June 2007: Bart's 2nd birthday and other pictures

We celebrated Bart's 2nd birthday with a huge party in the park. With nearly a 100 people showing up we had a blast on a beautifull day in the sun. Tons of food (thanks Margaret for BBQ'ing the meat!) and drinks, various juices for us and plenty of wine for the kids. Bart was again spoiled rotten with wonderfull birthday presents. Besides some neat electronic toys we where glad that most gifts where awesome books, blocks and cars. Bart continues to amaze us with his smiles, charm and uppercuts. He is now also really starting to speak and can name 20+ animals, all the letters in the alphabet (in 2 languanges) and a 100 variations of things on wheels are all properly called "car". Amazing! Best of all is when he spots a picture of either of his grandfathers which he calls "poepa", which we are guessing will make his Dutch grandfather rather proud because of the first 4 letters in there. Earlier in May pappa Dam went for a trip to the Netherlands to visit family and friends. After 11 years it is great to still be in contact with some dear friends from Holland and it is wonderfull to hear that everyone seems to be doing well.

November 2006 to March 2007

Between November 2006 to March 2007 we celebrated Barts second Halloween with Opa and Oma Backer. We had a surprise visit from Coen Binnerts from Holland. Christmas 2006 was wonderfull with the Sarabia family at great grandmothers house. Bart is in his pink period, he clings to his pink stoller with his princess Bear in a wonderfull gay way (his father was tought that 'gay' means 'happy' ;-). Bart got the chance to play with his cousins Jan and Loes during the 3 week visit from uncle Hilmar and aunt Martine. We went to visit the San Diego wild animal park in the middle of the winter while it was 85 degrees (30 celsius). Not as as warm as on Pappas birthday (92F/33C) followed a few days later by 30 seconds of hail ... coldest winter ever!!. Bart continues to be the happiest and cutest kid that we have. He enjoys dancing on music and playing a veriety of increasingly advanced letter and number games on his computer. We don't know if he can walk because all he does is run. His vocabulary is now rappidly growing and he can identify about 20 pieces of anatomy in Dutch. He proudly points out any number or letter when asked in English or Dutch as well. Ofcourse he also points out that snow is 'hot'.

October and September 2006

Random pictures from September and October 2006

August 2006 Family vacation to Texel

In August we went on a family vacation to Texel in the Netherlands. We went with Opa and Oma Backer and the Valk family (Meline, Wilko, Yorick, Julie and Annemarijn), the Backers (Hilmar, Martine, Jan and Loes) as well as aunty Saskia. It was marvelous weather and an enormous joy to see all 5 of Bart's Dutch cousins together.

May 2006 Alaska

In May 2006 the family ventured on an Cruise to Alaska.

[story in progress...visit back later for more]

April 2006

In March 2006 we make the decision to move to San Diego. Closer to Teresa's family is going to be very good for Bart. We find ourselves a nice appartment to live in for the next 6 months which gives us time to get to know the area around La Jolla a little before trying to find a family home here. Dam starts work at his new company Qualcomm. Bart gets spoiled by many visits to Aunt Margaret, Conrado, Grandpa and the rest of the family. Bart is quickly developing into a little boy. Before he is 9 months old he managed to walk his first few steps and at the age of 10 months he has stopped crawling altogether. Two (rather large filesize) video's of him walking through our new house can be found here (9MB) and here (5MB). You might want to right-click and "Save As..."

Our current address is:
5210 Fiore Terrace #L-214
San Diego, CA 92122
Home Phone: +1 (858) 677-6798

December 2005

November and December are the months of holidays and festivities. We had a marvelous Thanksgiving with the Sarabia's in Arizona. At home Teresa cooked her first Turkey which turned out amazing! Later in December Bart went for his first trip to the Netherlands. The long flights went really well. It is hard to believe that at only 7 months Bart has been on 10 flights allready. It is even harder to believe that just before Bart was 7 months he managed to stand up (and has not sat down ever since). We stayed with Opa and Oma Backer in Lelystad and had the time to visit Hilmar and Martine's new house in Lage-Zwaluwe. On the first Christmas day (Holland has 2) we had a wonderfull brunch with Oma's side of the family. The next day we had an amazing Christmas Dinner at Wilko and Meline. Dam's wish came true when it started snowing on the second Chrismas day giving us a rare white Christmas. This visit marked the first time that the whole Backer family was together with all 6 grandkids, 3 of which where born in 2005! We also got to visit Jan Willem and Esther in Haarlem. Two weeks of fun with the New Years party beeing one of the highlights. More amazing food and ofcourse the infamous Dutch fireworks madness. Nobody got hurt, though we really tried ;-)

San Diego November 2005

Early in November Bart went for his second trip to San Diego. The occasion this time was the wonderfull wedding of Paul and Erica. At the beautifull Hilton at Torry Pines on a sunny and warm early day in November we had magnificant party. Among others we partied with Colin, Tammy, Wiley and baby Casey and our good friends Gary and Madeline. Highlight of the evening was the chocolate fondue! No mention is to be made of the guys who got drunk and smoked sigars at the end of the evening ;-)
The rest of the weekend was spend with family and a nice visit with Thuy and Steve.

Halloween 2005

Halloween 2005 started with the yearly ATI costume contest in which Dam managed to win 1st prize in the groups category as Lurch from the Adams Family. The get together with Shari & Victor, Jadie & Xin and Christina & Peter was fantastic. Our beloved little ones Bart, Alex, Kevin and Vanessa where all appropriatly dressed for the occasion. We ended up at the Teddy Bear Factory where we found that infants can fit teddy bear clothing. Muhaha...

Later in October 2005

Later in October we had an amazing experience taking care of Maria's six year old twins Nina and Taylor. The girls played with Bart, wanted to go outside, then inside. They played with crayons, pencils, playdoh, the piano, each other and alone. They laughed, screamed, ran, climbed, crawled, jumped and occasionally sat still for a few seconds. One of them even had a fever for a bit. They ate and drank, prefereably every 3rd dish Teresa made for them. And all of that...was in the first hour of the weekend! :-)

October 2005

October was by far the best month ever! But then, so was the previous month and the next one is looking to break all the records again. We have heard rumors of babies that can crawl at an early age, and the smart parents that we are we decided that we where going to discurage Bart from crawling. We don't care about the bragging rights, we care about the problem that once the critter starts crawling you can't leave him alone for more then a few seconds. Our brilliant strategy worked. For 3 days. Then he turned himself over and started crawling. So now we go bragging everywhere that our little Einstein can crawl at the age of 4 months (though I can see on the faces of the other parents that they are glad that theirs can't). We got to visit Maria and her 2 adorable 6 year old twins Christina and Taylor. We took Bart to the movie "Wallace & Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit". A must see for everyone. We had our friends Jadie and Xin over for dinner with their son Kevin. As always we also spend many days with Shari and Victor and the kids. Clearly showing that we are first time parents we bought Bart many new outfits and toys that he is happily outgrowing before the month is over. Bart is facinated by the computer and keyboard, I'll let him tell you about it: " QWZ A34EV". After typing that Bart found the keyboard combination of "Format C:\ [Yes|No]? Y" and had his hand hovering over the enter key....