Summer of the Monkeys

Making sure each child feels special when you are having a baby is the best way to ease sibling rivalry. Knowing that, I always make sure we have good stuff planned for everyone when I'm preparing for a birth. This time we'd stumbled onto a monkey theme (see It All Started with a Hat), and that set off an explosion of ideas.
Setting up a nursery always involves moving things around and freshening stuff up, and that creates opportunity for jealousy. To ease that I redid their bathroom with monkey stuff I scavenged from six different stores. I set it up a day or two after I got home from the hospital and it was a big hit. I couldn't redo all of their bedrooms, but I freshened up a kid space with a new shower curtain, trash can and other incidentals.
Deep cleaning the house is one of the ways I get ready for a new baby, but maintaining that clean can be tough. We also struggle with such basics as making sure everyone brushes their teeth. For the first three weeks or so of life with baby I just kept reminding and pushing when baby allowed, and they did pretty good. We went over the house this Saturday, and managed to get the whole house clean in under 2 hours. During the family meeting afterward I pulled out new bedding for the girls and jungle wall stickers for our boy. None of it was expensive, but it was a huge morale booster. With everybody happily hugging their reward for jobs well done, I introduced a new system for tracking chores--the monkey tree.
I had bought some great stuff from Oriental Trading Company and the little magnet monkey faces inspired me. Each child has a color of monkey, and the tree is divided up into ten basic chores that all of them are required to do. They have a monkey for each chore which they put on the tree as they finish. When they are done for the day they can put a monkey face on the corresponding leaf. Everyone who has a monkey face on all five leaves can put a silly springy monkey on the sun. Participation in the weekend family adventure depends on getting your monkey on the sun. So far it has been a great system.
Here's hoping your summer is full of happy monkeys and family adventure.