We’re up to day 3. More exciting by the moment, eh?

Joseph and I messed around Wednesday morning, then, out of simple boredom, boarded the bus to take us from the hotel to the World Congress Center. (Riding the bus and the train being highlights of trips for 3-year olds). Got to the OSV booth to find that Michael had gone ahead with Plan B, which was to take a couple of OSV designers to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit for inspiration and education. (Plan A being to do it Thursday morning).

Left with an afternoon free and no car, I toyed with the idea of riding Marta up to the Lenox Square Mall and doing some serious maternity clothes shopping (2 more weeks, tops, then I’m done with the current wardrobe), but then decided that was too much trouble, and settled on The Atlanta Children’s Museum, which was just a few blocks from the hotel.

Good choice.

You all know how highly I think of interactive “science” museums, so I embarked upon this venture ready to complain, but on that score, was disappointed. For this isn’t a science museum, but rather a big old indoor play yard with no pretensions. We stayed for almost three hours, but Joseph could probably have gone a couple more and been very happy.

Most science or children’s museums have small sections devoted to these kinds of activities – a water play area, sand table, and so on, but this did it all on a large, very nicely done scale. A kitchen overflowing with plastic fake food, water, sand, a tap dance area, big toy train, giant tinker-toy type discs and sticks, a big Rube Golberg contraption into which the kids put plastic balls to watch them go up and down pipes, and a very cool large plastic wall upon which the little ones could paint.

During one of Joseph’s sand table sessions, I watched a youngish, very well dressed African-American woman hover over three children, obviously siblings with their fair freckled skin and red hair. She moved between the three of them, gushing with praise for their mounds of sand. She introduced herself to another woman and said, “These are the ones I take care of,” patting each of the red heads. Nanny, I thought, which then inspired a reverie about the high-powered parents off somewhere making loads of money while someone else took their kids to the museum. But then I realized…the mother was there! She was sitting off to the side with a friend, chatting, and, I overheard (I’m a writer…it’s what we do, okay? ) her refer to the nanny as “Cookie.”

New South? Old South? Who knows. All that I know is that the Land of Nannies is certainly foreign to me, but the Land Where You Go Places and Look On as the Nanny Takes Care of Your Kids is a completely different planet.