A Survival Guide For New Parents

We had our baby. Everything went great, and I'll be posting baby pics here soon. In the meantime, I'm running guest posts by awesome people, while Kim and I try to figure out how to be parents and live on zero sleep.

Today's guest post is brought to you by one of my favorite people, Rob Shepherd of RobShep.com. Rob is also the pastor of a new, awesome and thriving church called Next Level Church in Newport News, VA. Check out his blog HERE. Follow him on Twitter HERE.

Also, today was my first day back in the blogging saddle over at TV Asylum. Check out my latest "Breaking Bad" recap HERE. (Available at TV Asylum around 1:00 p.m. ET)

Enjoy!

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Photo used courtesy of Creative Commons user Lester Public Library

Hopefully, if you are a new parent, you aren’t winging it. Hopefully, you’ve read a book or five and sought some advice from parents who didn’t raise psycho billy hose beasts. Even with some great research there are some things that you might not be prepared for. The following is a survival guide for the first few months of being a parent:

More Blogging Olympics - Plus a Breaking Bad Recap

Artwork by Wes Molebash

Yesterday, I made you guys aware of a competition going on at RobShep.com that I'm involved in called the Blogging All-Star Challenge.

So far, the race is neck-and-neck. Many of you have voted already, but we still need your help.

If you haven't voted yet, you can go cast your vote for Team Ricky HERE. If you have already voted, first off, thank you. Second, we can still use your help as you try and rally as much support from your friends and cyberbuddies on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and any other internet domain where you spend time socializing.

For crying out loud. Rob has Jon Acuff on his squad. Are you kidding me? That guy can tweet about a booger he picked that looks like Elvis and get 40 million retweets! There's no way this competition should be close...but it totally is, and it's because you guys are awesome.

So keep up the good work, and remember, it's not over until the end of the week.

As a quick aside, I wanted to remind you guys to check out my weekly recap of the latest episode of Breaking Bad -- here.

To inspire you to keep chugging along and to evoke a bit of laughter, here's an incredible video put together by fellow Team Ricky member Tor Constantino:

The Blogging All-Star Challenge

Ricky vs. Rob: The Epic Battle of the Century...or at least this week.

A few weeks ago, Ricky Anderson emailed me to inform me he'd picked me for his All-Star team. I dusted off the cleats and found my old glove, just in time to find out that we were not going to be playing softball (much to my dismay), but instead, we were going to be taking part in an online popularity contest.

Here's the deal.

Rob Shepherd and Ricky have both selected a list of their favorite bloggers on the whole wide world webernets.

It should be noted that Ricky, a guy I just met on the internet a few months ago and have never met in person, picked me. Rob, a guy who I have personally known for over 18 years, did not. I'm not bitter about that. Not at all.

Moving right along.

TheIsleofMan.Net Interview: 'Rob Shepherd from RobShep.com'

Rob Shepherd has a website called robshep.com that you need to check out immediately if you've not already done so. His blog includes spiritual truths communicated by using humor and real-life experience.

He's a pastor, a husband, the father of twins and just an overall really cool guy.

Oh yeah. We were in a band together in high school. Don't hate.

Rob was generous enough to give up some of his very precious (and usually baby-occupied) time to answer a few questions.

Game on.