Today the family went with Inari to her best friend Alastar's birthday party. It was at Travel Town, a really great outdoor train museum in the middle of Griffith Park. Trees, flowers, shrubs, and the grand metal carcases of the industrial revolution. Just off of Forest Lawn drive, it is deep in the park, sandwiched between Forest Lawn Cemetary and the Horse Trails. Despite the proximity of the Cemetary, it is a very pleasant kid friendly place. Geared towards toddlers and the grade school set, it is a last resting place for many old passenger cars, turn of the century locomotives, and just plain old trains. Every weekend they are booked to capacity with children's parties and families riding the little makeshift train that circles the entire attraction. Needless to say, though it is hidden in plain sight, most Angelenos don't actually know it even exists until they have children and are invited to the park for a kid's birthday party. Just like us.

However, at the ripe old age of three, Inari is a veteran when it comes to Travel Town and so are we. Tomorrow we will be returning for another birthday party for yet another friend of Inari's from her preschool class. But today, as always whenever Alastar is involved, it is all about Alastar.

Inari and Alastar have been very close friends since Inari was 1years old and Alastar was 2. It was purely by chance that they met when Alastar's mom and I started going to the Westside Family YMCA to work off post baby weight and meet other moms in desperate need of an hour long break from the most exhausting work any of us have ever had or will ever have since. I don't know if you've heard, but being a parent is tough - to say it is highly rewarding is a given but the actual work of the whole thing is a completely different animal entirely tailor made to go. At most YMCAs in Los Angeles, parents that want to workout - particularly new mothers - can leave their children in Childwatch for an hour with reliable caretakers while they take an exercise class ( usually on little to no sleep - the cruel irony of being a postpartum woman in a weight obsessed culture). Strange as it may sound, many moms that I know, myself included look forward to pushing their bodies to the limit during these childfree times in between the myriad times that we are pushed to the limit trying to take care of our children while they are hanging on us, nursing on us, chewing our hair, dropping their favorite sippycup into an open sewer and/or all of the other crazy mommy challenges that happen when you are trying to juggle folding up a recalsitrant stroller, transporting a child from said stroller to a childseat, or just getting your child to preschool or ballet class on time and in one piece. But these are my issues. Alastar's mother Mary and I have since become very close friends, but it was the unique relationship that Alastar and Inari formed all on their own while waiting for us every week in Childwatch that brought us and subsequently our two families together. And this was before both of them could really even talk - especially Inari.

It's been over a year now, two moves ( Alastar's family to South Pasadena, our family to Encino) and two new babies ( Inari's baby sister Siri and Alastar's baby brother Teagan) since Inari and Alastar have regularly been in each others lives. Unfortunately, when Alastar's family moved to South Pasadena the trek to West LA to make it to the YMCA became too much of a long haul. But still whenever Inari and Alastar see each other, they are inseparable. Even though Inari wasn't the only guest at Alastar's Travel Town party, once she arrived, they only played with each other, wandering amongst the old trains and once or twice team crashing the other birthdays in the park ( which was sometimes a bit problematic:>). On the little train ride around the park, they sat together, and my husband tells me that Inari was stroking Alastar's hair during the whole ride ( this allowed by a kid who is definitely on the aloof side about being touched). Why wasn't I there to see it first hand, you ask? I was hanging back with the younger siblings, Siri and Teagan which both Inari and Alastar came back to play with after their ride around the park. This is why I can report firsthand that both Inari and Alastar were quick to remark to one another several times what "good babies" their friend had in their younger sister and younger brother, respectively.

To say that the Krabbes had a really good time at Travel Time today would be quite an understatement. That it was really hard for Inari to leave her friend when it was time to say goodbye would also be an understatement of great magnitude nearing the tragic.