Another awesome Badger, Mel, and some of her Internet friends, came up with a brilliant idea to help one of my favorite bloggers achieve a big dream of hers.

Cali, the blogger we’re helping right now, is an inspiration and the embodiment of commitment to and compassion for family. She left her left her job and friends, the life she’d built for herself as an adult, and moved back home to be a full-time care giver for her grandmother, who is crippled by Alzheimer’s.

Through all of this, she’s spent her savings and everything she’s been able to pull together towards her dream of becoming a mother herself. After more than a dozen IUI cycles, she was accepted into a shared-benefit egg donation IVF program. At the last minute, a false positive on a nasty medical test forced her to withdraw from the program.

A few weeks later, with a clean bill of health and deep discount from the clinic, she pushed ahead with an IVF cycle. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn into a full blown pregnancy or baby. However, it did end with enough frozen embryos that as soon as she can afford a frozen embryo IVF cycle, she can try again.

Friends of Cali’s from all over the blogosphere have joined Mel and others to help Cali have that opportunity. Behold:

What UTERUS is doing is donating items to an eBay auction, from which the profits will benefit Cali.

I’ve donated a First Edition paperback copy of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003, and also an autographed copy of my book. (Hey, librarians! You could score a copy of the book cheap! Hey, everybody else! You don’t have to actually read it if you buy it.)

I’d like to get organized and donate some of the other random stuff filling our house, but since we leave for Tampa in the morning, I just don’t see that happening in time. But Mel, if we’re still adding stuff to the auction next week, we might have more!

Last year, I didn’t enter Looky, Daddy’s Haiku contest, but the finalists made me laugh hard enough to snarf coffee.

This year, I got inspired to join the party — and my entry was selected by an actual published poet, Claudia Carlson, bribed by Looky, Daddy to be the judge, as one of the 10 finalists.

So, wouldja go vote for me?

Here’s my 2 stanza haiku:

Approaching Two
Do you want some cheese?
No! Some apple juice instead?
No! No! No! No! No!

Cheese? Cheese? Cheese? Door? Cheese?
Can you say please? Peez. Tanku.
Mommy! Mommy! Kiss!

And when you’re done, go vote in the 2007 Weblog Awards! Voting ends around 5 pm today (east coast time), if I remember correctly.

Looky, Daddy, is a finalist in the Parenting category. He’s got some stiff competition.

In fact, I love many of the blogs he’s up against, but ever since Looky, Daddy published his hilarious essay on why he he is afraid of his three preschool daughters growing up to be lesbians, he’s had my loyalty. (Yes, you read that right. Trust me. And trust LesbianDad.)

Other blogs I love that are up for awards include Mombian in the LGBT category, Stirrup Queen in the medical category, BlogHer in the community category, Bitch PhD in the Top 250 category, and Konagod in the category I won last year, The Best of the Rest. Vote for them, too! (Those are links to the voting — links to the blogs are below.)

• Mombian
• Stirrup Queen
• BlogHer
• Bitch Ph.D.
• Konagod
  

I don’t know what’s up with Noah. He had a rotten day, at least the parts of it that I saw.

He woke up at 5:30 am and was hysterical within 2 minutes. He did not want his wet diaper or wet pjs removed. (Too bad.) (I compromised on the shirt, which was only slightly damp at the bottom hem.)

Then, he didn’t want to go downstairs. Or stay upstairs. Or have apple juice. Or toast. Or an apple. Or play with choo-choos. Or watch choo-choos. Or put on shoes. Or go to school. Or get out of the car when we got to school. Or sit down for breakfast when we got to the classroom.

Every one of those things took between 2 and 5 times longer than usual. And half were accompanied by screaming and crying, while the other half just generated repeated yelling of, “No no no no no no no.” There were also many sobbing requests to nurse. (Honored, with conflicting feelings on my end. But seriously? You would have to have had a heart of stone to say no.)

Then this evening, it was more of the same.

We got home from day care and Noah did not want to go inside. Or go for a walk. Or a ride in his stroller that was longer than 1 minute. Or ride his trike for more than 30 seconds. Or put his shoe back on. Or take his other shoe off. Or eat dinner. Or watch choo-choo. Or have the tv off.

In fact, Noah actually “persuaded” us to eat dinner outside. In the front yard. And the street. Which is hard when dinner is pasta with vegetables.

When we finally came back in, Noah screamed for a solid 10 minutes. He vigorously fought having his shirt, shorts, and diaper removed, having a new diaper put on, having pjs put on, and having baby tylenol squirted down his throat.

After I took him down from his changing table, he bounced like a jumping bean trying — with total futility — to get back up on top of it. So I put him back, whereupon he lay down face down, still screaming, and tried to bat me away so I wouldn’t comfort him any more.

Eventually, Jill had the brilliant idea of reading me the airplane book, which slowly distracted Noah and got him to stop screaming. But when she offered him the book, he threw it across the room.

Did I mention that Noah hit me 3 times over the course of this evening’s adventure?

Before he could get hysterical again, I settled him into my lap to nurse, and Noah did continue to calm down and eventually fell asleep.

Personally, I feel that this picture captures my feelings about the evening. But it needs a caption!

Leave a comment with your caption by 9 pm EDT on Friday, and I will send you a fabulous prize consisting of either the best toy I see at this weekend’s awesome consignment sale, aterrific article of children’s clothing from the same sale, a book I love, or maybe even all of the above.

If you have kids, tell me approximate ages/sizes and if there are any kinds of toys they (or you) either love or hate. Those links are the things I found at this particular sale last spring. If you don’t have kids, I will try to come up with something else entertaining to use as a prize.

Who wants to win a free trip to Miami to go to “O You!” courtesy of Revolution Health? O You is the Oprah Magazine’s upcoming live conference, featuring Suze Orman and lots of very cool regular contributors to O.

Revolution Health, which is a website founded by AOL founder Steve Case and in the interests of full disclosure, where I know some people and have a friend who is a consultant, is one of the big “O You” sponsors.

Revolution Health is having a contest where they’ll be giving away pairs of tickets, plus some cash, once a week for the next 5 weeks. You can enter the contest every day.

So who are these Revolution Health people, and why do I keep talking about them? (A number of you are joining me at BlogHer and participating in a focus group they’re sponsoring.)

Right now, they look to me like a large, attractive competitor to WebMD. The look and feel is very easy and intuitive, like early AOL software, but there’s not much of a participatory feeling in place.

What they hope to become is a tool that helps “Family Chief Medical Officers” (aka Moms, mostly) by providing “best of breed” information and tools to help us “take control of our well being.”

I don’t know exactly what that means, but I’m giving them a solid check-out, taking their money for my opinions at BlogHer, and would love to have them send us to Miami.