Biker Babes

I've been meaning to write this post for a while because it is something I am so passionate about! Biking with babies! Combining two great things, babies and bicycles, what could be better? We have made a family decision to drive less and walk, bus and bike more. Dan has always done a lot of biking and I did a lot of biking as a kid because we were a car free family (yay!). I think somewhere along the way I got scared off from biking, thinking it was too hard and too dangerous to do all of the time, especially as a family. But as I started reading more blogs about family biking I realized there is a real movement to biking with children and going car free or car-lite. Europeans have been doing this for ages and I wanted to take a page out of their book, they make it look so easy and fashionable! So we had decided we wanted to give it a try, now we had to find some gear that worked for us. We looked seriously into getting a Bakfiets cargo bike until we discovered that it would be around five thousand dollars to get one to Canada. We ended up importing a BoBike baby seat from The Netherlands. These seats are awesome, they are mounted at the front of your bike much like the available in Canada Wee Ride or Ibert seat but they have a much more supported back so you can start biking with your child earlier (they suggest 9 months) and they can be comfortable for longer. We started Lily in the BoBike for short trips around 7 months (GASP!), I know technically this is "illegal" in Canada and you aren't suppose to start your child until they are 1 year old. We felt this was such an arbitrary number and since babies develop so differently, we thought this was a safe guess as to when they might be ready. The idea is that they wouldn't be developmentally ready to sit for long periods of time and that their neck wouldn't be strong enough to hold up a helmet. (We also got Lily the Giro Infant helmet which fits really small head and is super lightweight). At 7 months Lily had been sitting unassisted for a month and was comfortable to sit and play for long periods of time, she was also pulling up on furniture and in our opinion was strong enough. So far it has been two months of biking as a family and it has been great, Lily sings and blows raspberries down the road and we take slow and easy backroads which leaves lots of energy to laugh, talk and play as a family. So much more enjoyable than driving in traffic with a screaming baby strapped into her car seat. This past Saturday was a gorgeous fall day and we spent it biking around our lovely neighbourhood. We stopped for a snack and a coffee at our favorite local coffee shop before heading home. If you are able, try adding biking into your daily life, you will be amazed at how much happier it makes you! (and your wallet and the environment)