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

There are ornaments hanging on our Christmas tree that I made dating back to 1974. I was 4, for those of you who are curious… Every year from the time that I can remember, we made homemade ornaments for the tree. Dough in the oven and paint, using wool, beads, sticks, string – you name it, we’ve made it. Every year, when we would decorate the tree, it was a walk down memory lane. I loved this. When I moved to Holland in 1998, I...

There are some great things about living abroad, sharing cultural differences, learning lots of new things but the yearly traditions can get complicated. In Holland we have someone called “The Sint” who looks an awful like Santa but totally isn’t. He arrives by boat from Spain with his “Piets,” the Sint version of elves but they are black (from the soot from the chimneys? But, that’s not...

Have any of you changed your kids’ school? We made the decision to change earlier this year and the kids have just started at their new school. We were reasonably happy at our little school with 100 kids but the school was getting too small, which in the end meant that 2 of our girls would be sharing a classroom for much of the next five years. That, plus the other things on our list, made us decide it was time to change. Our school...

…you must have had mom,” said my almost 9 year old son yesterday. He was asking me if I had played some computer game he loves when I was a kid. I laughed out loud and said: “No, we didn’t have those games when I was a kid.” OH… speechless for a second. “So what games did you play?” I had to think – hmmm… Pong? Space Invaders? On our Commodore 64 by which time I was at least 12. He still didn’t really get it. “So what...

Once a year, my husband and I are lucky enough to find a friend willing to spend 24 hours with our kids.  Don’t get me wrong, the kids are great but the idea of 4 kids for someone that doesn’t have 4 kids is, well let’s just say, not exactly their idea of a fun weekend. But this weekend we did find a great friend (mother of 5 who’s youngest is 17) to come a hang out with our gang. The kids love her so we left with only a few...

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....