The Dark Side.

It was my job to make dessert for a little dinner party Saturday night. I decided to make a recipe found in Cheesecakes, Pavlovas and Trifles a mini cookbook by The Australian Woman's Weekly.

This cheesecake is baked, which in my opinion is the superior kind of cheesecake. You just can not beat a baked cheesecake for texture and the balance of sweetness and flavour is outstanding. This particular cake contains cherry ripe bars as well as tinned cherries and melted dark chocolate. It's official title is "Ripe Cherry Cheesecake", however if I could name it I'd just call it "The Dark Side", due to it's rich dense chocolate texture. The tinned cherries are wonderfully refreshing amongst the decadent chocolate surroundings.

The recipe suggested cute rosebud curls of chocolate to top the cake. I unfortunately had the double drama of losing my ice cream scoop [needed to form the curls] and a humid day which is so wrong for working with chocolate! The decorations ended up being just what I could manage in a short time, but I think they worked ok.

Beware if you try this one, it's not cheap! The ingredients cost me at least $20, but it was totally worth it! The recipe serves 8 generously, though if one or 2 people were on WeightWatchers, it could stretch to 10 easily. The above picture is my plate after I finally got through my piece. Mmmmmm!

Wii Family

We decided to treat ourselves to the new Wii Fit upgrade Wii Fit Plus this week. I liked the addition of training routines and we figured some new games would be fun. I'm hopeful that it will help me to exercise off my new fat accumulation areas gained from the baby. The biggest reason for getting it though was the "baby" function. Thats right, we can weigh Addie and keep track of her weight on the Wii fit!!!

To our delight, when we entered her details, and it realised that she was a baby, it changed her Mii body from an adult to a crawling infant. Oh so adorable!! Check our out little Wii family below.

6 weeks today

Today Adelaide is a whole 6 weeks old. She was visited by her friend Annabel this morning and we photographed them together as seen above. Annabel is 4 months old, and Addie is 6 weeks, so the girls don't really know that they're friends, but seeing as her parents are friends... they're stuck together. Embarrassingly Addie was scratching Anna's face, but we smoothed it over by saying "she doesn't even know that she has hands yet" which is actually true.

This is the first picture I've captured with Adelaide smiling. Isn't she beautiful?

Baby Milestones

Its hard to avoid looking desperately for your baby's milestones. The seemingly small things, like her poo turning yellow,  developing tears and starting to dribble have been profusely praised. We waited with great expectation as Addie began to make full eye contact with us, and followed us with her eyes. Her first smile was much anticipated, and we told everyone we could.

Her latest milestone is a bit sadder for me, and makes me wish that I could halt time for a while. Adelaide has outgrown many of her newborn clothes.  Its not like my baby is a giant. She's in about the 75th weight percentile for her age, above average but not remarkable. She's quite long too, with massive feet, but not off the charts. Her growth though means that for the past few days when I've put her 'cute' outfits on, they are tight and her limbs are too long.

I have many larger sized clothes for her, more than she can wear. However, retiring what she has been wearing so far though tells me that my baby girl is growing up and theres nothing that I can do to stop it!!

Schultz Family Holiday

This past week Andrew, Adelaide and I have been in Ballarat for my sister's wedding. We stayed in Ouyen on the way down, in a cute little caravan with great 1970's decor.

Hope and Jason looked great for their wedding. Thankfully the weather was perfect for the day.

Its a bit hard to see Daniel's face, but here are all of us kids together - something that rarely happens!

Addie has a new place to hang, in her new red bouncer. She's started smiling now, which is just the best thing ever! We re back home again after introducing Adelaide to a bunch of friends and family over the week. Its good to be home!

Yearbook Yourself why don't you?

For a few days I've noticed black and white pictures of my friends popping up on Facebook. All of these pictures had old fashioned hairstyles. So I followed the clues and found that my friends have been playing on the website, Yearbook Yourself.

Doesn't 1958 suit me?

For the rest of my "looks" go to my Yearbook Album.

Awwww...

Adelaide and Andrew had a nap for a few hours this arvo. Isn't it lovely?

Addie models her nappies.

Addie is getting bigger, and is ALMOST fitting into the nappies that I've talked about many times before. How cute do they look?!

Lovely Baby Moment

We had an exciting baby moment on Thursday - we weighed Addie and she'd put on just over 300gms in the past week, which means she's a beefy 4kgs! Go Adelaide! It was a nice relief given that she was close to loosing too much in her first week, and only just made it back to birth weight by week 2.

My lovely baby moment is this morning. Addie sleeps in our bed [Gasp! Don't tell the SIDS ppl!] because we all get much more sleep that way. Lately she's been waking and just looking around for a few minutes [sometimes seconds] before dem

anding to be fed. So this morning, I fell asleep feeding her, and woke about an hour later to see her just looking around her with big open eyes, looking generally contented. It was such a warm fuzzy moment. I wish I could capture it on camera - but it wouldn't translate anyway I'm sure, so its the kind of memory I put in my heart to enjoy later.

Our Adelaide having a look around on my lap yesterday evening.

Addie cleans out the Chemist

Addie has had a most interesting week.

I've been to the Dr's office more times than I'd like to count [I don't like counting to three] and the chemist, plus the Health Clinic! I'd like to thank the semi-socialist Gov't Medicare system for paying for the Dr visits and subsidising our prescriptions.

Adelaide is pretty well, but has a few annoying newborn issues. Her belly button is inflamed and oozy, so I had to buy sterile saline solution to clean it with. She has a scorching nappy rash - by the looks of it a fungal/thrush infection. So I'm applying Clotrimazole Cream to her bottom along with a zinc oxide cream. The thrush is now in her mouth, and as a direct result on my boobs. OWCH!! So I also have to regularly give her Nilstat drops and apply Daktarin to myself. Its a sticky job!!

The nappy rash and belly button will heal better in a dry environment so Addie has been hanging around the house with no nappy on. I keep a square towelling nappy under her to catch the poop and wee, but I've still been covered in baby wee for the past two days. Its been a fun adventure!

It feels like I've bought the whole chemist in the past 2 weeks! Hopefully all the creams and potions do their jobs and Addie and I have clear skin, and stop seeing the Drs soon. These small dramas aside, she is just beautiful, feeding well and putting on weight like a champion. Go little baby, go!