Blog Posts by Valerie Isakova, Shine Parenting Editor

Grumet in EthiopiaAs we review 2012, we realize that a puzzling amount of parenting controversies involve breastfeeding. Why baby + breast should be such a big deal eludes us, but apparently it is. Read on to find out about the best (breast?) and worst parents and parenting moments of the year.

Time Magazine Breastfeeding Mom: Jamie Lynne Grumet
2012's most notorious mother was Jamie Lynne Grumet, the pretty blond shown on the cover of Time Magazine breastfeeding her three-year-old son, underneath the caption Are You Mom Enough? The cover horrified pretty much everyone, including Grumet, who told Yahoo! Shine in December, "That wasn't what we wanted it to look like. Our reaction was similar to everyone else's when we saw the cover."

More on Shine: Angel grad student delivers woman's baby at bus stop

The magazine article was on attachment parenting, celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Dr. Bill Sears's book on the method, which promotes more extensive physical bonds with children than are usually

A terribly sad day.Every era has its unlikely but terrifying nightmare scenario that haunts parents, and often their children too. In the wake of the Newtown shooting, of course, it's school safety that's at the forefront of every parent's mind. "I want to weep, cry, and hug my kids," one Babble mommy blogger wrote. As President Obama said in his speech Sunday, "This is our first task—caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged."

Shootings in schools have been going on since at least the twenties, but it's only been since Columbine in 1997 that they've captured America's imagination at large. And even so, growing up in the 80s and 90s, parents and kids were afraid of sexual predators or stranger-danger abductions. Now, any parent with children in a school will be aware of the safety of the buildings and the school's emergency policy. After Newtown, we can't not be. Looking through happy photos of the

The Butter Chicken in questionTrader Joe's announced yet another recall last week, at least the sixth this year, affecting dozens of stores. This time it's a frozen Trader Joe's brand Butter Chicken with Basmati Rice entree, 4,865 pounds of which are being recalled because they may be contaminated with Listeria, a bacteria food safety experts describe as "scary."

More on Shine: Talking to your kids about food: the politics of our diets

The meals had already been distributed to Trader Joe's stores on the East Coast. Earlier recalls in 2012 were of Sunland peanut butter products stocked at Trader Joe's, Trader Joe's BBQ Chicken Salad, Trader Joe's Mild Salsa and Balela, the brand's deli and prepared foods involving onions, and Trader Joe's Butternut Squash, Red Quinoa and Wheatberry salad, according to the website US Food Safety, whose owner Susan Reef spoke with Yahoo! Shine.

More on Yahoo!: Listeria, the rare but deadly killer in your kitchen

Shoppers, understandably, are paranoid that there's something wrong

Age appropriate? UPDATE: The Shine editors would like to clarify that the results of this study do not reflect the opinion of our editorial staff. We love red lipstick at any age, think it looks great on older women, and plan to wear ours forever. The study we report on below reflects the opinions of women polled by Nurture Replenish Skincare—it's outrageous, we know, but we're just reporting the facts, Ma'am.

There is a time to start aging gracefully, and UK beauty product company Nurture Replenish Skincare surveyed 2,000 women age 45-plus and found out that most of you think that's at age 59. This is the age that women thought it was time to ditch high heels, red lipstick, tight clothes and false nails and try to look "more natural."

More on Shine: 5 things young guys love and find sexy about older women.

"The results of our studies are often quite surprising," Nurture Replenish Skincare spokeswoman told Yahoo! Shine. "We think middle aged is supposed to be later, but women are saying that in the

Leaving the hospital earlier this week.
The horrible news broke Friday morning that the receptionist who fell for the prank call from two Australian radio DJs impersonating the Queen of England and Prince Charles, which resulted in private details being released about Duchess Kate's pregnancy, was found dead in a suspected suicide. The UK newspaper The Daily Mail reports that the receptionist, Jacintha Saldanha, was a married mother of two and that her unconscious body was found near the private hospital where she worked. EMTs were unable to revive her. Her family has been notified.

If the reports are accurate, the global celebrity machine has claimed another victim, as it did William's mother, Princess Diana, who died in a high-speed chase with paparazzi in France in 1997. This would be an extraordinarily sad thing to have happen at the outset of life for Diana's grandchild, and must be a terribly sad moment for William and Kate, who, though they would not be responsible, could not help but be shaken by these events.

We

We at Shine have spent as many dark nights of the Internet soul as the rest of you have, searching desperately for new weight loss methods. We’ve PayPal-ed $9.95 for an anti-binge-eating newsletter (that then haunted us for decades). We’ve ordered questionable supplements, despite knowing from size-ballooning experience that fad diets and weeks of starvation-deprivation actually cause…long-term weight gain. But then what’s a person who doesn’t fit her pants to do? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to this question, as your top 10 most frequently searched diet terms of 2012 make clear. You searched for a few well-established diets, but many of the others are either unproven (best-case) or dangerous and illegal (worst). A 500 cal day boosted by illegal hormone shots? Sprinkling every meal with ranch-flavored crystals? Which is worse? Which one works. Find out about these and other popular diet terms below.

Weight Watchers
Weight Watchers has been around since the 1960s, and relies

Mother and baby
To the lady I met at the grocery store café yesterday:

You are the well-dressed late-30s professional who squealed when you saw my little boy, in his stroller, making a revving sound and running his toy car over his own legs and arms. He has big blue eyes, strawberry-blond hair, and comically fat cheeks, and he was loudly saying "bbbbrrrrrbbbbbrrrr beep! beep! bbbbrrrrbbbbbrrr". It was heartbreakingly cute, I will admit, though I am his mother.

I laughed and asked if you had kids, because usually it's other mothers who exclaim over strangers' babies, and you said, No, but you really wanted a baby. And then your eyes kind of welled up with tears, and we were plunged into one of those moments of intimacy with total strangers that sometimes happen in a big city. "I have a boyfriend," you explained, "But he isn't ready yet." And then you said, bitterly, "I don't think he'll ever be ready." Struck by the moment, I gave an equally straightforward reply: "Get rid of him and have a baby!"

A paramedic with the mom and newborn.

They say that every woman's birth story is unique, but having a baby at a bus stop, assisted only by an English Literature grad student with a cellphone and a shoelace is more unusual than most.

More on Shine: Man sues wife for giving birth to ugly baby

Student Emily Brewer, 36, was heading for her bus stop at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on Wednesday, with her almost three-year-old son, Dylan, when a woman she didn't know approached her and asked for her help. Brewer followed her into the bus shelter to find the woman's friend, in a squat position, heavily pregnant and in distress.

"It appeared to me that her water was breaking," Brewer told Yahoo! Shine.

Brewer has no medical background. "I am a doctoral student at UNC in 18th and 19th Century British Literature," she said, "however I am a mom and I've been through labor. I'm glad it was me. If an undergrad had been called to help, it would have been pretty scary."

Brewer with Lopez later, at the hospital.

Brewer sat both her son and the friend's