The Fabulous Door Monkey

Hi everyone,

Today, I'm sharing with you an item that helped us sooo much in our cot-to-bed transition.
We were all dreading this moment: Is he going to sleep in a new bed, is he going to get out constantly and cry to stay with us, is he going to wake up during the night, creep up downstairs, open the door and run on the street, all on his own?
So many worries, apparently they are normal but that doesn't make them less perturbing!

The transition to toddler bed became quite a sudden need for us when our LO decided that his cot was too small and so easily climbable, why hadn't he thought of it before really.???. So in a hurry, I did a quick search on Amazon for a cheap but sturdy toddler bed he would like and enjoy.

The toddler bed

I think the choice was quite obvious for us as our son loves cars and trucks and the perfect cute one turned out to be the cheapest one too!!! yeahhhh So we purchased this:


Unfortunately because we had a cot and not a cot bed, we also had to purchase a mattress that fit this new bed!!! Eeeuurrgghhh

If you don't know what you have:

• A cot mattress is 120x60 
• A cotbed or toddler mattress is 140x70 

I'm very happy with the purchase I made, again on Amazon, the mattress is very soft and comfy but firm enough for a good night sleep:



So that was the bed sorted!! For about £140! I say: result!!!

That evening after we got all the bits and pieces, we tested it: I built the bed next to his cot and we asked our LO which bed he wanted to sleep in. He was so curious about the new pretty bed, he jumped on it straight away!! Relief!!!!

We read the story in his new toddler bed

He was soon fast asleep with his head firmly on the head board for orientation

 The day after, we got rid of his cot and he never complained!!

Now the next issue was how to keep him in!!!!!!

The fabulous Door Monkey

We tried the usual gate but unfortunately as our LO is a little monkey he easily climbs over these!!
We thought about installing a bolt on his door but I thought that was a bit mean and I would feel like I am keeping my son in prison!

After a long search on Amazon for the right solution for us, I found the Door Monkey!!
It serves two purposes really:

1. Keep your child in his room
2. The finger proof design makes it super safe

At first, I was a bit worried that we would have to keep his door ajar and that would distract him because we've never done it before. But it doesn't seem to bother him. Also, it's so convenient when I want to check up on him: I don't need to be super careful with opening the door, it's already open!!!!

When he wakes up and he wants out, he tries to open the door but can't, if he wants to close it, he can't either so his fingers are safe!!
My LO is quite strong and the house a new build (=not solid) but he hasn't broken anything yet. The Door Monkey is equipped with soft rubber grips so when your LO goes crazy on the door, it keeps it quiet :)

So comforting to know that your child is safe in his room at night and not wandering about!!!

If you are wondering how it works, you just have to clip it on the door, takes 1 second to place it or remove it!! It's that good!!!

How do you do to keep your LO inside his room and in bed? 

See you Soon,

Toddler calendar

My BFF's daughter is of the same age as my son. They are so cute together! They really enjoy each other's company which is quite amazing since my son is usually very competitive with all his friends. However, her daddy has gone to Afghanistan for 4 months. This little toddler is particularly smart for her age so her parents were very open with her and prepared her for 3 weeks ahead of the big goodbye. When it was time for the last hugs, she bravely waved daddy goodbye.
For her 2nd birthday, her mum - my BFF - asked me to create a calendar for her to understand when her daddy would be back.
My BFF has always had a lot of confidence into my creative and crafty skills when I personally wouldn't have considered myself out of the ordinary. It's partly thanks to her that I took the decision to step into the creative world of healthcare advertising!
Here is what I came up with: an interactive and educational toddler calendar whereby each day's task is to decorate daddy's pix with today's sticker and each day's learning lesson is to practice 1 colour and 1 shape. The top line is L M M J V S D which are the initials of the weekdays' names in French. Each line is therefore 1 week. There are no numbers so Mum can start anytime 12 weeks ahead of as yet unplanned daddy's return. Within the calendar is a hidden message to stick on the photo. The overall aim is for her to visualize how time works and understand how long she has to wait until daddy's return

A 'French' interactive and educational toddler calendar

Daddy didn't go by himself, his daughter gave him her Maya soft toy

To do this, I used all crafty material from my Tesco: A pack of shiny coloured soft cardboards, stickers, letters, felt decoration, craft glue.

I'm quite happy with my work although you can never be 100% satisfied, a project remains a project forever!!. I could have gone simpler with a simple calendar and golden stars stickers but there was nothing exciting in that project and I was thinking that just sticking a sticker might not be enough activity for a toddler and she might want to stick them all in one go hoping it would bring daddy home sooner. With this calendar, there are 3 actions: unstick a sticker from the right place, decorate daddy with it and learn 1 colour and 1 shape.
I think it will also be useful for Mummy, I'm pretty sure she knows colours and shapes but it will help her visualising when her hubby is coming home!!

Update October 2014 - And here is job done, daddy is now back with baby!:)

Sugar shapes

For my BFF's daughter's 2nd birthday, my BFF wanted to create a Maya the bee sugar shape to place on top of the birthday cake.

Influential Creativity

 What influential creativity means to me

Last month, I bought a set of plastic cups for my toddler to drink from a glass. However, my son found that plastic cups could be used in a wide variety of ways other than their primary destination; such as for example stacking them, or throwing them on the floor. To me, using influential creativity in the advertising world is not a dissimilar process.

Your target audience can either accept the information and drink your every word, or accept it without processing it, or he can refute the information. That’s when the danger of losing the attention arises.

Influential creativity is about choosing the right vector to convey your message:

Music is a big influence in my life; from the beat to the lyrics, I feel and love songs for different reasons. Some songs are more influential than others, either to me, you or to the world. One of my favourite songs of all time starts with the lyrics “Mama, I just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger now he’s dead”. I don’t like this song because of its lyrics, and I doubt anyone does. This song has had a massive impact on, not only a whole generation of musicians, but also on the general public. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is the song that has been recognized so many times as the best song of the past few decades for its sheer craziness and arrangement, which influenced the evolution of music.  Another song, also one of the best of all times, but with dramatically different lyrics is “Imagine all the people living life in peace”. “Imagine” makes you stop and think about what the world would be if we stopped focusing on borders, religions, and material possessions. John Lennon‘s song appeals to people because we all want to live in peace, it’s an ideal.

From the advertising world, we can also encounter dramatically opposite messages that would still both appeal to anyone in this day and age. The Coca cola advert on the “Social Media Guard” and the EE’s Kevin Beacon “It’s a no Brainer” advert couldn’t be more different. Kevin Beacon promotes the possibility of accessing the same internet network whatever device each family member uses, whereas Coca-cola promotes bringing people together by guarding family members from social media. Somehow, both appeal to everyone because although we all need a reliable internet broadband, we want to respect traditional values.

Last week, I was invited to an art installation called I am not the Cancer. It was about combining art and information on advanced breast cancer. The art installation consisted of 6 TV screens showing face and back of the head of 3 silent patients suffering from advanced breast cancer. Opposite each TV screen was a comfortable armchair; and above each armchair was a speaker from which you could hear their devastating story. So to hear their story, you had no choice but to sit in this armchair and look in the eyes of this silent patient on the TV screen (not a comfortable thing to do). The point of this art installation was to make you realise that, however uncomfortable it is, that’s how we should support friends and family as opposed to using escapism as a coping method. This art installation was created to make you feel differently; like John Lennon’s song, to question yourself in order to make you behave differently.

Influential creativity is all around us, from everything we see, everything we hear, which ultimately leads to how we feel and behave. How we use creativity to influence our surrounding through music, art or advertising is about connecting with an audience on a personal, emotional or practical level. It is about understanding their lives, getting comfortable with them and letting them know that you are here to make them feel better, or be better, or make them question themselves by providing them with an emotion, an ideal, a service, or a product.

As a science blogger of Science is So Sexy, I use influential creativity to connect with my readers, the tone is light - I don’t write the same way I used to when I wrote academic presentations and my thesis for example - and I assume a Sexy persona in order to feed scientific information to my readers without them using the usual escapism method that most people employ when hearing the word Science. I know who my readers are, what they expect when they come by my blog and what I can do to retain their attention. The best blogging tip you will always find on any blogging blog, is “amazing content”. But once you have your amazing content, you have to dress it up using the right fashion tools so people will want to read and see more. 

Last but not least, I cannot forget that I am a job applicant trying to convince you to offer me a job in your company. Job interviews are also all about influential creativity: how do I answer competences questions such as where do you see yourself in 5 years or what is your biggest weakness without sounding boring and common. I am the product and services. What are your needs? How can I fill those needs? Using my personal and professional experiences, we want to make sure we fit together and we can build the best team.

Like the cups, I need to make you drink my every word, I can’t be on the pile of boring candidates and I certainly don’t want you to throw away my application. If I managed however to retain your attention and make you want to see more of me, that’s also what influential creativity means to me!

Personalised nursery deco

Yes I admit it, I am a Pinterest addict! But you can find such amazing things, you can get inspired!!
So one of the things that really appealed to me is this pin:

So I've made my own:

New House

Finally we are in our new house. We were so lucky to have founnd it, there is no work to be done, we could just move straight in! I'm glad because neither PF nor I are very good at DIY!
Also for the first time in my life, I've had to buy curtains!!! OUr bedroom is painted in grey (which is quite a relaxing ambiance for a bedroom!), so I bought some really nice silver curtains from Debenhams, all I need is to find some cute tie backs. I shall spend a few hours on Pinterest for that!! ah ah!!

Unfortunately, I think it was quite popular because the cushions are already out of stock! As soon as I get PF's furniture, I shall order some really nice silver bed linen to go with them! oooh I can't wait!!! Exciting!!!
The furniture are being moved over here on the 26th July! I hope the transfer will go smoothly and nothing is damaged! Those furniture have been stored for 4 years in a garage. I'm afraid the sofas will have some molded dents that will be impossible to unmold!
We are probably gonna have too much stuff as well, but I decided it was best to have everything here in London, where I can sell them instead of keeping them forever in Belgium, where things don't really get sold by internet! yet!
Right, baby is awake now, I shall take care of him... He grows so quick! He's almost 9 months old already!! Gosh that means I've been out of a paid job for 11 months!!! I insist on paid job coz maaaaaannnnn Being a mum is the hardest job I've ever had to do! You don't get bored, you're always tired, always on the move, always alert, and this 24/7! You play, you cook, you clean, you console, all this multiplied by a million times!!! But it's so rewarding to see my boy grow healthy and happy!!
OK, I shall go otherwise he's not gonna be happy anymore....lol

Things are getting ready...

Well, 9 months is NOT a long time at all!!
Of course if you consider that by the time you realise you're pregnant, you're already at week 4 to 5!
At this point of writing I have 5+ weeks left to go!! So of course I'm in full speed to prepare everything!
How to dress, feed, clean, make your baby sleep are all steps being underway!! Classes are booked, next check up scan booked, midwifes appointments taking place for the "administration" bit but also, nursery corner being prepared...

To have time to prepare mentally and physically, I was lucky enough to have my contract ending last Friday 3rd August (well, actually 17th but for HR purposes, my last day was 3rd). That was weird enough! Every day, I would do one single experiment and think OMG this might be my last of that kind EVER! Indeed, as I don't know what kind of job I will be doing once I've nursed my baby for 9 months, and as I don't think science research would be a good next move, I need to find my new career path!
For that future plan, I'm hoping to be able to work on my blog Science is So Sexy a maximum of time and  use it as a basis for my future beautiful CV!!
When I was younger, my mum used to take picture of my brother and myself on each first day of school, so it was only fitting that for my last day of work before a very long break, I should take a pix of myself.

Although I don't know what the future holds, I will never ever in my life be so long without either studying or working. Technically I can stay out of job for 10 months, I'm sure I could do more but I will see how I feel of course, maybe I will miss work, maybe work somewhere will look for me...

My 5-year plan...

As I'm entering a new chapter in my life that is going to be considerably different from the others, I have decided that it deserved a new blog!!!

The life of my yet-unborn child will have his own diary, starting with pregnancy!!!

It is written in French as it is primarily for family and friends overseas, but there is a Google translation tool!!! Translation is very funny sometimes - very interesting!!!

BLOG ADDRESS

As I was thinking about what I have achieved in my life, I realised that my life seems to be written in chapters of 4 to 6 years!!!:

85-91 Primary school

91-97 Secondary school

97-02 University

02-06 New life in London and PhD

07-12 Professional life and beginning of love story with PF

12-...  Newly parents

It is funny how at interviews you always have that question "Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?"

I've never been able to answer this question because quite frankly my luck in love has been more than disastrous, and professionally, science is such an unstable career path, you never know when your next job will be!!! 

But now, I actually know what I'm gonna do!!!:

1. Have a baby!! ah ah if all goes well he's on his way...

2. Find a new career from March 2013 (don't know what though but ideally something to do with science communication!) that will pay a nice mortgage, my bills! To achieve this:

2a. Write write write for my blog Science is So Sexy

2b. Read read read everything to do with medical writing 

2c. Take editing course

3. Buy a cheap ready-to-move-in 3-bedroom house in my area for a move in October 2013 at the latest - and organise move of PF mum's furniture from Belgium!

4. Get married somewhere sometime in 2014 - maybe twice: in Belgium for family and in London for friends. Or in London for immediate family/friends and an exotic island for us+best friends

5. Make another baby around 2016

Admittedly 2. and 3. are gonna be the hardest ones!! But I am so hopeful I can get a nice job!!!  Once job is in the pocket, 3. should be a matter of chance more than real work!!!

Ok, time to get back to actual work!!! ;)

Oh OK, I can't hold it...

Our baby will be a boy! And his name will be Nuno!

I've been so uncertain about all other names. Originally FDF (Future daddy Fiance) wanted the name Dennis, after Dennis Wilson - drummer and brother of Brian Wilson, singer, songwriter of "Forever", one of the most beautiful song ever written - in my opinion:

Our little Monster will be...

... a surprise...


We have decided to keep it a secret. Both EF (Exstatic Fiance) and I know though. We just want to keep something for ourselves!
It's crazy how when you are pregnant, you suddenly become public property! Everyone wants to know everything! OK, they are happy for you, especially mums and mums-to-be!
But I'm telling you, I'm not really a private person and will tell every single detail to my besties, but to the whole world, nooooooo!!! I guess people asking me really annoying questions are not really my friends and don't know better than to ask!
So as a result of being poked in the belly and questioned on all existential questions by everyone and anyone, FUF (Fed Up Fiance) and I have decided to keep at least one thing for ourselves!!!
And you know what? I've had complaints!
Yes, a colleague of mine explained to me how ridiculous it was to keep the sex of the baby secret when we knew it!!! I was shocked!
I also have about everyone making guesses based on how I talk, or how I behave! I find this extremely disrespectful, towards my wishes as well as my body!! And FYI, baby is a masculine word in French so I WILL say He when talking about it!!!
And of course what's gonna happen is that when the baby will be born, those same people will say "I knew it" and that will annoy me even more!!!
So to say or not to say... If I haven't shared the information with you, that means we don't see each other enough or you're not part of my closest friends!! In any case, the verdict will be in 4 months, so no long to wait... And no point telling me you need to know the sex of the baby as to know what to buy! No one buys baby clothes for a friend before the baby is even born!!!
On this grumpy note, Have a good day...lol

My biggest creation so far...

But I doubt anything would top that!!

17th March 2012

As my friends would tell you I am soooo not a baby person and do not care a bit about other people's babies!! I did have a bit of bonding with my brother's daughter of whom I am the Godmother but apart from that, that's it!

I do like my close friends babies but that is about it really!!!

And then, now me!!!

I do see this as my own scientific experiment and so far it's working!!

If only all my lab exp. could work as easily as this one!! lol

1st of May we will know if my HF (Happy Fiance) and I will have a son or a daughter - pretty scary...

Although the closer we approach that date, the less I want to know...

Maybe it would be extra special to not know? It's not like I'm gonna dress my girl in pink and my son in blue, anyway it will be all colours. The only problem is that in shops, clothes are usually adorned with trucks or fairies...

Either way, I won't be disappointed, there are only pros for each sex!

It is true what they say, you only worry about her/him being healthy!