OMSH

Kenny: “Momma, I can’t go fast enough with these [training] wheels on. They need to come off.”

Me: “The training wheels?”

Kenny: “Yes, they need to come off.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll take them off for you, but…” and then I stopped and chose not to finish my sentence.

Kenny: “What? What were you gonna say?”

Me: “Nothing, don’t worry about it. Here, give me a hand and we’ll take off the training wheels.”

So, Kenny helped me find the right size wrench and we quickly removed his training wheels. The proud little man marched his bike to the end of the driveway, convinced he was going to ride off down the street with his sisters. In fact, his confidence even had me convinced. Until he got on.

He weebled.
He wobbled.
He sat there, exasperated, with both feet on either side of his bike, holding him up.
He put one foot on the right peddle, pushed forward, and went a couple of inches, nearly falling over.
Tried it again.
And again.
Frustrated, he got off and walked it a bit.
Then, he tried again.

Finally, his sisters made it around the drive and Emelie said, “Kenny, you can’t learn to ride on the driveway – you need to get in the grass.”

“OH! In the grass?” he asked them.

Meredith: “Yea, if you try on the hard driveway you’ll get lots of cuts and blood because YOU are gonna FALL A LOT.”

Kenny: “A lot?”

Meredith: “Uh huh. It sometimes hurts, but sometimes doesn’t. I guess that’s what it’s like when you learn to ride a bike.”

The girls rode off again, for the second time, without Kenny.

I knew he was about to cry – I could see his face scrunching up and his head hanging lower to hide his glassy eyes.

“Do you want me to put the wheels back on?” I asked him.

“NO!”

“Okay then, I’m going inside.”

I watched him from the window. He layed his bike on the driveway, sat cross-legged and watched his sisters with the most miserable, pouty face the boy could muster.

And then, he came inside and went to his room to play Legos.

The next day I heard Jeff and Kenny in the garage. I went out to see Jeff putting Kenny’s wheels back on the bike.

He just wasn’t ready – and missing out on riding with his sisters was NOT WORTH being able to ride on two wheels without assistance.

Today I watched him trudge up the hill by our house – its pretty steep and all three of them like to ride down it fast and hard. It makes me cringe to watch him – I’ve learned to NOT WATCH actually. But today I watched and noticed how very little he needs his training wheels.

They are his security.
And being the baby of this family, he takes his time through each new rite of passage; he’s all about security.

Soon, very soon, he’ll outgrow the training wheels.
I’m so thankful I have a photo to remind me of yet another marker in his life.

As I grow closer to Jeff, there are simple, daily reminders of him I look for and enjoy. Some of these things, even a few years ago, would irk me to ridiculous proportions – maybe even be a catalyst to a fight. But now? The same things leave a smile on my face and find me lost in my thoughts of our last hug, kiss, or words, as I go about the day.

This morning, as I brought in plants I watered and drained on the porch through the night, I saw my first daily reminder – an empty coffee cup resting on the arm of the Adirondack nearest the front door. I hauled the plants inside, one by one, thinking of his morning. I felt him crawl out of bed after too many rounds of the snooze button. I heard him shave and shower, remember glimpses of him dressing, and then, like every morning, he stopped long enough to lean-in, kiss me awake and tell me he loved me; his aftershave lingering in the bed a while longer.

After all the plants were back in place I went out on the porch, retrieved his mug, and used it to pour my first cup of coffee from the pot he made earlier.

Funny that.

A few years ago I would have nagged him about bringing his mug inside. I would have asked why he had to ALWAYS leave his mug on the chair outside. I wouldn’t have considered his kindness – slipping out quietly, not waking the kids, and then, enjoying those last few sips before he headed out on his bike for work.

But now? Now its simply the sweet evidence of how our lives are so intricately woven together.

Good coffee.
Nice blend.

In the series, Ditch Your Blogging Training Wheels, I strongly suggested self-hosting your WordPress blog with Liquid Web, or any web host running cPanel with Fantastico’s Auto-Installer.

Fantastico’s automated processes make it easier to initially install a self-hosted Wordpress blog, as well as manage future upgrades (of which there are many).

In this entry, I will walk step-by-step through the process of upgrading my WordPress blog from 2.5.1 to 2.6.1**.

How do you know when a new WordPress Version is available?

The WordPress Dashboard is built with an auto-reminder script that posts a notice when an updated WordPress version is available. For the past several weeks I have seen the following notice when I log-in to write or manage my blog.

Be aware a new WordPress version may be available for MANUAL upgrades before it is available for upgrades through cPanel’s Fantastico Auto-Installer.

Do yourself a favor and don’t lose any sleep over it; your blog will not self-destruct for the few days/weeks it takes for the automated upgrade to become available. Believe me, you don’t want to bypass the auto-process for a manual upgrade – I’ve been there and done that; it isn’t pretty.

Deactivating Plugins is your FIRST STEP!

The first thing you must do before upgrading your WordPress Blog is to deactivate all plugins. At times, plugins will be incompatable with newer versions of WordPress. When this happens, it can cause all sorts of issues across your WordPress blog. The absolute best way to remedy this – the only way, really – is to deactive ALL plugins BEFORE upgrading. Here’s how to do it.

Once in your WordPress Dashboard, Go To Plugins (orange link in top right corner).

Within ‘Plugin Management’, click the white square to the left of the word ‘Plugin’ (found in the dark grey horizontal table header right below the blue button that says ‘Deactivate All Plugins’) to auto-check ALL PLUGINS.

Then, click the blue button, ‘Deactivate All Plugins’.

This will deactive ALL your plugins immediately; your blog is now ready for a clean upgrade.

Upgrade using cPanel’s Fantastico Auto-Installer

Open a new tab in your browser window and log into your blog’s cPanel – typically found at yourblogname.com/cpanel. Depending on the version and/or skin of your cPanel, it may, or may not, look like mine below. Either way, find the link to Fantastico’s Auto Installer.

On my server it is called Fantastico Deluxe.

Click through the Fantastico Deluxe link and then, click on the radio button to the left of the ‘WordPress’ text link found in the left sidebar.

Once in the ‘WordPress’ window, your current version is displayed. As you can see, I was running 2.5.1 (*tsk*tsk*) and needed to ‘Upgrade to 2.6.1′**.

Click on the text link to Upgrade.

WordPress lets you know your current installation will be backed up. This means if it all goes debunk, you can get your ‘old’ blog back.

Click the ‘Upgrade’ button to begin the Upgrade.

As your blog upgrades, the status will show beneath ‘Upgrading…’. Once the Upgrade is finished, the text will read ‘Upgrade completed.’

Make sure to copy and save the information provided (see yellow highlighted area below). THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ‘JUST IN CASE’ KIND OF STEP necessary to retrieve the WordPress backup generated a couple of steps back in the upgrade.

I paste mine into a .txt file and name it something ominous like, ‘if-wordpress-upgrade-fails-09-24-08′. There will be no mistaking what this text file holds if I need to search for it later.

One more step and you’re outta here!

Go back into your WordPress Dashboard, and in the same Plugins Management window as before, click the white square to the left of the word ‘Plugin’ (found in the dark grey horizontal table header right below the blue button that says ‘Activate’) to auto-check ALL PLUGINS.

Then, click the blue ‘Activate’ button.

And that’s that!

Troubleshooting

On the rare occasion that something goes wrong when you click back to view your newly upgraded WordPress blog, it is PROBABLY one of your plugins. Go back and Deactivate your plugins again, activating them one by one and checking the face of your blog. Often times, this process of elimination will reveal the dirty little plugin that won’t play nice with the rest of the publishing software.

Check the plugin’s support page/site for upgrades, and if there isn’t one, do NOT click to Activate it again, but instead, contact the plugin’s programmer to request a fix to match the current version of WordPress.

The most popular plugins work to keep up with the most current WordPress version; when they don’t it is typically because the plugin function was integrated into the updated WordPress blogging platform.

** As of this post, the most recent version of WordPress is 2.6.2, but that version is not yet available for auto-upgrade through Fantastico on my server. I could manually install the newest version, but I prefer to wait for the auto-upgrade to offer the newest version to save me time and frustration.