Bicycle Built for Six

Lianne is a Canadian mother of four, entrepreneur and author of Lianne’s Quick Guide - for the busy woman. Her first title is called Babies 0-6 months and can be purchased directly from her website. She lives & works just outside of Amsterdam and can usually be found biking around on her bicycle built for six. You can follow her on Facebook and on Twitter

I just read Sandy’s guest post for the Yummy Mummy Club about when you can leave your child alone at home.  I thought about just adding a comment to her post but then I thought I would also share my experience on my blog. When can a child stay home alone? Age, maturity, types of neighbors, how far and how long you are going for, all play a factor for me. As with most parenting issues, I think gut feeling trumps. First – to review –...

We are lucky: our kid’s love listening to music and stories when we have long drives and short ones for that matter. In fact, they even love listening to CD stories while sitting on the couch.  I can’t follow a sentence without loosing track of the story but despite the fact that in many cases their attention span is well, not great… with these stories it’s better not to interrupt them. We have a number of vacations approaching...

My kids have just had a week off school. It’s officially called the “Spring” vacation though I don’t see many signs of Spring anywhere. The kids were ready for the break, I wasn’t. Wasn’t the Christmas vacation only 8 weeks ago? So, what does one do here with 4 kids at home for a week in the winter? About 50% of the Dutch head out to the Alps for some skiing. We didn’t – I pick the Laurentians over the Alps any...

Yesterday my kids all wanted to walk to school – it’s only a five minute walk from our house but we usually bike because as you know, every extra morning minute is like gold – at least in our house. Those actual three minutes saved by biking ensure that all of the kids teeth get brushed or that I get everyone’s hair done, not just the first person I happen to start with. So off they went, out the back door and towards the path that...

One of the first great advantages of having all of my kids at school occurred during this last week: Skating. The tiny country of Holland froze completely, every water way, canal, pond, creek, lake – totally and completely frozen, which meant – skating, skating and more skating. And when I say skating – I mean on those long skates that you can speed with. There is more water than road here so hundreds of kilometers of skate-able ice....

I had four kids in four years. No twins. No joke. Why does someone have four kids in four years? I hadn’t really even planned on having one. Then one day, in my 30’s, my body had a different idea and there I was, pregnant with my first and in big-time panic. What would happen to Me? My life as I knew it? My freedom? My friends? I went through mourning (yes, this is a bit over the top but it seemed to help me) of my old life, cried a...