It has been about six months since this page was updated, so here’s what’s been going on.

Phil’s now just under 3 years, 4 months old (40 months if you’re not the Rainman) — that means mom and dad are 18% of the way to having an empty nest. He weighs 36 pounds, 13 ounces (36.8 lbs.); He’s 3 feet, 1 inch (37 in.) tall. He still has both eyes, all his fingers and toes, and his cranium is still intact (not that he hasn’t been dropped on his head a few times).

With the nicer weather here over the past few months, Phil has enjoyed the great outdoors more and more. He enjoyed swimming at the lake a lot, and likes trekking around camp. People who were at camp over the summer were divided by Phil into two groups: “Friends” (camp counselors) and "Kids" (campers, regardless of age from first grade through high school); Phil really enjoyed playing with both groups, but noticed that friends were around a lot longer than the kids who were only here for a week. Phil still asks when his friends are coming back. His pedal car is getting quite a workout now that he’s figured out how to work the pedals (a skill he acquired during a trip to Grammy and Poppa’s with the Big Wheel they bought him). He also enjoys the playground equipment at Emerald Park, a public park in Eugene (a nice discovery from his friend Jackson’s birthday party) and the playground at church. Current indoor favorites include the "Escalator Mall" (Valley River Center, home of 4+ escalators (there are 2 escalators in vacant anchor stores, and one in an anchor store near the coin-op car rides: we don’t ride those), McDonald’s Playlands, the play areas at Papa’s Pizza restaurants, and the PlayCenter at Fred Meyer (where he can be dropped for an hour while mom and/or dad shop and/or take a break at the Starbuck’s cafe).

Phil has been on three major trips in the last 5 months. In May he went with mom and dad to Redding to visit with Grammy and Poppa for a few days. While there he enjoyed visiting Turtle Bay Park and Museum and a long car ride over to Whiskeytown Reservoir and Weaverville. Because dad was "tortured" with the vocal stylings of "The Sons of the Pioneers" while on long car trips to Trinity County, Phil (and the rest of the car) had to listen to them as well; if we had a Carpenters CD he'd have had to hear that, too. In early August, an expatriate NurseWeeker held a barbecue in Seattle, so Phil got both barrels-full of dad’s family (Aunt Sarah) and friends (see photos at left). During the trip, Phil camped out in his play tent (in a hotel room and Sarah’s apartment) and experienced his first Porta-potty (“stand still, don’t touch anything”). In September he flew down to Ventura with mom for a couple of days. Dina’s Aunt Jean passed away, and although the reason for the trip was very sad, Philip was a great morale booster, and folks appreciated some toddler therapy. Philip enjoyed spending some time with his cousins and Great Uncle Bob, as well as Grammy, Poppa and Great Gandpa Al.

Of course, Phil had his third birthday at the end of June (and isn’t really toddling anymore, it’s more of a full-on sprint most of the time). It was a quiet at-home affair, but he really appreciated the presents. In July, Phil went to his friend Jackson’s birthday party. Jackson came out to the lake several times over the summer, and the two boys had a great time together.

Perhaps the biggest news to share is that Phil had a “Potty Party” on September 27th. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Phil learned the importance of keeping his pants dry, and that big boys use the toilet so they don’t wet their pants. In the weeks since then he’s only had five accidents (two poopy, three wet). In each case we practiced running to the potty from different locations of the house, reviewing what we learned at the Potty Party (i.e., dry pants good, wet/messy pants bad, big boys use the potty, diapers are for babies, run fast to the potty, don’t have an accident, etc.). His last accident was on October 9th, so for the past 12+ days he’s had a perfect dry/clean pants record. (The book we used was Toilet Training in Less Than a Day by Nathan H. Azrin, Richard M. Foxx; we highly recommend it. Phil had the fundamentals down in about 3 hours, but we went a bit longer to make sure he had a good amount of practice (we kept him nice and full of soda, he took care of emptying it himself).)

Words and phrases Philip likes:

• Zesty
• Spicy
• Punch-lemonade (this is whatever concoction gets poured into his sippy cups, currently it’s half 100% OJ with calcium and Vitamin D added and half strawberry-kiwi fruit punch)
• Kelihopter (that'd be helicopter to you and me)
• Talk on the book (this is what Phil says when he wants a story read, similar to “talk on the phone”)
• Supercar (this is what he calls Subarus, hence we have a “yellow Supercar”)
• “Daddy, go in the other room” (why does he say this? we don’t know)

Songs Phil likes (if he hears these on CD in the car he'll make you listen to them 20 times):

• The Space Song (Peter Schilling's “Major Tom (Coming Home)”)
• The Science Song (Thomas Dolby's “She Blinded Me with Science”)
• The Radio Silence Song (Dolby's “Radio Silence”)

His current favorite DVD: “Thomas [the Tank Engine] and the Magic Railroad” (one can only guess what the effect of early exposure to Peter Fonda will be)

Previous photos:
Newborn Phil
Phil at about 5 weeks
Phil at about 8 weeks
Phil at about 10 weeks
Phil at about 14 weeks
Phil at about 17 weeks
Phil at about 22 weeks
Phil at about 27 weeks
Phil at about 33 weeks
Phil at about 36 weeks
Phil at about 43 weeks
Phil at about 50 weeks
Phil at about 1 year
Phil at about 15 months
Phil at about 19 months
Phil at about 22 months
Phil at about 28 months
Phil at about 34 months