Blog Posts by Valerie Isakova, Shine Parenting Editor

The favorites are in! Thanks to all the wonderful Shine moms who sent in photos. See the full album of entries here. And the most hilarious costumes you inflicted on your babies were...

A family in the rain
For some people, storms and other natural disasters bring out the best in the family unit. They're a time to pull together or be glad of a partner's skills and support. For others, they bring out the worst. Those of us on the ground in NYC have heard over the past few days all kinds of testimonials both for and against relationships.

Usually in the "for" camp, it's a person talking with trust about their partner's opinion. "Bob knows from hurricanes, and he says it's time to get out!" Or "Jane would never let us keep this kids in a danger zone." These are family units pulling together, with each partner reinforcing the other's expertise. I even know a mom who moved into a hotel with two tiny toddlers, in order for her husband to be near enough his office to keep working through the storm. Anyone who has tried to entertain little kids in a hotel room knows that this was a true testament to love and togetherness.

Unfortunately, there are the other stories too. The woman resentfully

Natalie Portman's long, long lashes.
Wait a minute, this mascara won't turn me into Natalie Portman? I'm shocked! Horrified. I want my money back...

Seems silly, but a Christian Dior mascara ad has been banned in the U.K. because Natalie Portman's exquisite, thick, Bambi eyelashes were just too long.

More on Shine: How to wear bright mascara

The ad, which is for Diorshow "New Look" mascara, "must not appear again in its current form" according to a ruling posted on October 24th by the Advertising Standards Authority, the U.K.'s independent regulatory body for truth in advertising. The ASA found that the ad employed post-production techniques to enhance Portman's lashes in a way that could mislead consumers about the efficacy of the mascara. The complaint was brought against Dior not by outraged consumers, but by competitor L'Oreal.

"Post-production techniques are not prohibited by advertising rules," ASA spokesperson Matthew Wilson told Yahoo! Shine. "Most people understand and appreciate that every ad we see is

Cancer patient Michelle DunajA young, female leukemia patient says she was humiliated by a security search at Seattle's Sea-Tac airport last week. Security officials lifted bandages from recent surgeries, lifted her shirt to check feeding tubes and broke open an IV bag of saline solution, all in full view of other passengers, according to a report by Seattle's KOMO News.

More on Shine: My Breast Cancer Journey Part One: The Diagnosis

The Detroit-area woman, Michelle Dunaj, who is dying of leukemia, was taking an "end of life" trip to Hawaii, flying through Seattle. She called her airline, Alaska Air, ahead of time to find out what the procedure would be for traveling with prescription medicines and to request a wheelchair, but, when she got to security, Dunaj said, "nothing happened as it should."

Airport security officials denied Dunaj's requests for a private search, saying, "the location is fine," she told KOMO News. "It shouldn't have happened that way-they should be more respectful of people," she said.

In

A cute froggy.Babies are high maintenance in some ways, but they make up for it at Halloween, when you can dress them like pumpkins, flowers, rabbits, superheros, or anything you can dream up. Not only won't they complain-or even know what you've done-everyone who sees them will be amazed at their cuteness.

We love baby costumes, and we want you to share yours with us. Take a pic of your baby in costume now (you are doing a trial run, aren't you?) or on the day of Halloween ('cause who has time for trial runs!?) and submit it to us. On the morning after Halloween (Nov 1), we'll post our favorite entries in Shine's "Halloween Is For Babies" slideshow and use the top pics as the "cover" on our Facebook page. The entire album of entries so far is available on Facebook, here.

Entries can be made in two ways:

Uploading the photo on Yahoo! Shine's Facebook page
1) Like Yahoo! Shine.
2) Click the "Photo/Video" option in the box for new wall posts on the top left of the page. Choose

October is National Bullying Month, and the PACER Center: Champions for Children with Disabilities has rounded up teen stars like Annie Thurman from The Hunger Games (a home-schooled, 90-pound redhead who played the tribute from District 9) and mop-top Mikey Reid (Sinjin on Victorious) to tell kids that "the end of bullying begins with you."

Mikey Reid speaks out against bullying.

We love the message. But will the bullies listen? Those kids who bullied their bus monitor would probably chew the nice actors up and spit them out like so much playground gravel.

"Recognizable names and faces from television and the movies speaking out about bullying prevention can have a profound influence on kids," says PACER director Julie Hertzog. The organization got its start combating bullying because children with disabilities are two to three times more likely to be bullied than others.

The real trick to prevent bullying, says Sticks and Stones, a book about bullying by Slate writer Emily Bazelon that will come out in February, is to

A mother's worst nightmare.
As we get older and become parents, life gets hard in ways we could never have imagined. It happened to Raleigh, NC mom Max W. Miller, who describes herself as an ordinary middle-class mother who tried everything to control her rebellious oldest son, but did not succeed. Miller's son started selling drugs when he was a teenager. In 2005, when he was 19, he was sentenced to 92 months (seven and a
half years) in federal prison.

Now, Miller's son's prison term is almost over, though for over a year he's been in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) which means he's been locked-up for twenty-three hours a day. Miller has not seen her son in three years. She describes his situation as being dragged from state to state, from one maximum security facility to another, making it impossible for her to visit him.

"I can't even talk to him on the phone," said Miller. They communicate via weekly letters. In the Q&A below, Miller shares what she's learned about surviving a mother's

Possibly the most lavish wedding the world has ever seen is happening today, Friday September 21st, in Brunei, where the Sultan's daughter Hajah Hafizah Sururul Bolkiah, 32, is marrying a 29-year-old civil servant as part of a week-long celebration estimated to involve 2,000 guests and set to end on Sunday night. The ceremony itself, according to the UK paper The Daily Mail, will take place in the Istana Nurul Iman Palace, a 1,700 room palace that's home to the Sultan and his family. The princess's older brother, heir to the throne of Brunei, married in 2004 at a speculated cost of $5 million, reports say, but wedding planner Maya Kalman, founder of Swank Productions in New York City confirmed Yahoo! Shine's suspicion that this wedding might cost much more than that. "The rule of thumb for our average luxury wedding is $1,000 per guest," Kalman says. "I would guesstimate that a no-holds-barred event like this could easily be $15 to $20 million." Those figures include only wedding