The girls

Another lunchtime was inevitably at Šípek's. Unfortunately, at the last minute Hana had to rush off to the regions somewhere, so we didn't get to see her. And before I got my camera out Alena had gone back to the office, but left us with some wise words about Alastair's speech before she departed. The words are ringing in my head still: if he doesn't need to speak, he won't. It's so true, and I am trying to undo our habits and rephrase questions and really try and get him to make more effort to talk, and stop doing it for him. Already we've seen some improvement and he said "s" for the first time last week.

Anyway, as long as he got cuddles, he wasn't really bothered.

Ivana and Jana were both on hand for that. Everyone noted how much better Alastair's eating was and the mushroom soup we had was excellent.

Here is Adi getting help with his lovely tractor jigsaw he was given. Already a favourite.

And Kate was great in occupying Gregor for a good while, first with his flag and map puzzle, and then phoning the fire brigade to come and rescue us. After our Thai food, we popped over the road to meet Lucie (another ex-colleague) and her daughter Emma. They live in Turkey but were in Prague for a visit.

It's hard to imagine that this time last year Alastair couldn't eat. Emma was taking it all in and quite impressed by Alastair's show-off chocolate muffin skills.

A short walk to let our food go down in a sensible way - on the see-saw. Shortly after we got on the tram the heavens opened. Stomach contents remained intact, however.