I just got the bill for the kids dental visit in December. Wow, dental visits sure cost a lot of money. Now, this wasn’t any special visit we went for. Instead, this was for their six month checkup (you know, X-rays, fluoride treatments, etc). We are talking several hundred dollars, and I was in and out with two kids in less than an hour. Don’t get me wrong — I love my kids pediatric dentist. Her office just happens to be expensive even if you have dental insurance.

I can definitely see how having a dental plan is important if your don’t have dental insurance. To be honest, I wouldn’t know how we would afford to take my kids to the dentist twice a year plus ourselves! DentalPlans.com offers over 30 discount dental plans to help you save when you or your kids go to the dentist. On their site, you can easily find plans and dentists that are in your area. I loved that a lot of their plans actually offered orthodontia (which a lot of places don’t). If you have kids, orthodontia is very very very important. I also love that they have individual and family plans. If you don’t know exactly what you need, they also have the Dental HyGenie who will walk you through your needs.

If you are looking at ways to save at the dentist this year, make sure that you check out DentalPlans.com.

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My friend Phish wrote up this list of natural mosquito remedies. It’s a great list, and if it helps even one person not get bitten this summer, it was worth posting!

1. The blades of a spinning fan is the best way to kill mosquitos. Mosquitos can only fly in still air, and they do this mostly over stagnant water. The wind current of a running fan disturbs them immensely. They will try to fly behind the blades for stability and wind up flying into them and getting chopped to pieces in the meantime. Poor mosquitos! The ones that manage to escape will leave you alone as long as you have an artificial wind source as your plan of attack.

2. Lemons Most people believe in the power of citronella. And those people will swear by it’s effectiveness. But lemons are much more pleasant smell to us and do a great job of keeping the mosquitos at bay. Cut about a dozen fresh lemons in half and place them on your window sills. You can also use lemon grass. The smell will drive away most of the mosquitos. Use your fan as a back-up and you should be enjoying a bite-free summer.

3. Eucalyptus oil and Deet are both great mosquito repellents. And do you know which common cold remedy product has eucalyptus in it? Vicks ® vapor rub. Apply it to your upper body (chest, back, arms), and if you are wearing shorts, get your legs, too. You can also find chemical free Deet (check your natural or health food markets) which you can apply to your skin and clothing. That should keep the little blood-suckers at bay.

4. A mosquito net (kind of idiot-proof, right?) A mosquito net won’t kill the little suckers, but a good one will certainly keep them away from you. If you have an outdoor gazebo or tent that you enjoy hanging out under on a nice summer’s night, put a net up all around it for a bug-free atmosphere. A pretty net around your bed can serve the dual purpose of making your room look like a Casablancan get-a-way and keeping you out of harms way of being bitten while you sleep.

5. Vitamin B1 Every year, I forget about this vitamin trick. I had heard for years that you had to start taking it weeks before summer for it to be effective. Then I always forgot which B vitamin it was. And now I know for sure. Vitamin B1 does the trick! Taking this supplement during the summer months makes you a lot less tasty to the little vampires. Depending on what you eat, this method is about 50% effective. Some people swear by garlic, too. I’ll just keep eating pizza!

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Can you believe it? It is Madison’s last full day of school! She has a program in the morning tomorrow and then she’s done! It doesn’t seem all that long ago that she was just starting school. I can’t believe the school year is over though she’s got a busy summer ahead of her.

On that note, Will had his physical for school (so he can get speech therapy services through the summer) and he weighs 34 lbs. and is 38 inches tall. I went to his IEP meeting last week, and now I am just waiting for them to call and set up exactly where and when it’ll be. We also have to wait till August to see if he will get into preschool come fall. Keeping my fingers crossed.

We are in the process of potty training him too. Can you shoot me now? He went through 3 changes of clothes before I put him a diaper and gave up. Today, only one set of clothes and he made it into the bathroom. He just didn’t get his clothes off in time.

This weekend is his birthday, so it’s a crazy week this week!

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I hate dealing with our public school.  They make things 10 times harder than they have to be for everything.  Seriously. However, with Will aging out of speech therapy in June, I have no choice but to deal with them.

In March, we were suppose to have a transition meeting.  The state and the public school were to set up this meeting and let me know the date.  Said meeting never happened, so I started making phone calls at the beginning of this month.  When I called my service coordinator, I was told the school hadn’t called them back.  I waited another week and then I called the school directly.

Getting to the right person wasn’t too tough.  However, whatever list we were suppose to be on — we aren’t.  I was like “I have a letter from the state saying that we need to get this scheduled”.  She then put me on hold for at least 5 minutes and then magically found Will’s paperwork.  We scheduled what I think is an evaluation for next Friday.  She told me I had to go to our home school and fill out a bunch of paperwork and prove residency.  She gave me a list of what I had to bring to do that.

Will and I went this morning to get the paperwork and give them what I needed to prove residency.  The paperwork was annoying and long (Just like it was when I had Madison screened for preschool.  Seriously, why is it any of their business how much I make and how old Bill and I are).  The kicker — I didn’t bring the right information in, because I was told the wrong stuff!  Needless to say, I was pissed.

Now, I’m not the first person doing this.  I do not understand why 1.  they can’t use all the crap I filled out for the state or 2.  how the administration building and the school don’t have the same requirements.  I was told from the school that they would not send the paperwork over unless I proved residency first (even though I have an evaluation scheduled for next week).  Now, the admin people told me that I could fill out the information packet and not to worry about having the other paperwork.  I could have screamed.

Now, you’d think the two buildings would know what the other one is doing.  Seriously, you;d think they don’t want to give us services.  Needless to say, after about 2 hours of running around, I got all the paperwork and went back to the school and turned it in.  Now, hopefully they manage not lose it between now and next Friday.

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If you are a blogger, I know you are going “WHAT??!!??”  I know I was when I got my hands on this story.  I personally don’t care for the New York Times.  I’m sick and tired of them making mommy bloggers look like money grubbing idiots.  I have to admit that it is nice when the tables get turned on them.  I know you have to be asking “what happened”.

Here’s the deal.  Uwe Reinhardt is a Princeton economic professor.  He writes about health care for the New York Times’ Economix blog.  That part is all fine and dandy until you find out that he earns more than $500,000 a year working for a number of health care companies. He also holds more than $5 million worth of related stock.  The best part?  This actually breaks the New York Times rules, which ban anyone who writes for the paper from having any financial interest “in a company, enterprise or industry that figures or is likely to figure in coverage that he or she provides, edits, packages or supervises regularly.” Heck, you’d think in his bio that they would have at least mentioned some of this.  Nope.  What’s The New York Times reply to this all?

“Professor Reinhardt is a leading expert on the economics of health care, and has provided valuable and independent insights in his blog posts. He has mentioned his service on corporate boards in the blog, but we are reviewing how to more fully describe his activities for readers of Economix.”

The same New York Times that says the rest of us bloggers don’t disclose our relationships. Pot meet kettle.

Here’s the breakdown of what he owns, according to NYTPicker:

• Reinhardt either earns an income or stock options from the five different private health care companies for which he sits on the board of directors/serves as a trustee.
• He has sat on the board of health care company, Amerigroup, since 2003.  This tenure has resulted in Reinhardt’s accumulation of 144,558 shares in the company and $226,531 in cash-and-stock compensation.  These shares are currently valued around $4.8 million.
• Reinhardt also holds 75,625 shares of Boston Scientific (worth more than $500,000 in value) and earned $213,132 from the company in 2009. He has sat on the board of this medical device manufacturing company since 2005.
• Reinhardt serves as a trustee for H&Q Healthcare Investors and H&Q Life Science Investors.  His 2008 income from the companies included $43,000 in income and between $1 and $10,000 worth of securities.
• He also made $2.3 million from the 2007, $5.1 billion sale of Triad Hospitals to Community Health Systems.

What are your thoughts on this?

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