It always takes Hudson too long to finish his breakfast—this morning, it’s cottage cheese with a peanut butter chaser. Followed by, because I can’t resist, a graham cracker coated in peanut butter. It is just too gratifying NOT to give him his three favorite foods in succession–or rather, in tandem.

James Taylor is playing. A hazy light covered in clouds pours onto our rug, the rug we call the meadow rug because it’s the color of a meadow at dawn. The scene is perfect, even with a wadded hoodie (Hudson was cold this morning so I tried to warm him by putting him in Jeremy’s hoodie—he hated it) and the tops of all Hudson’s stacking toys strewn higgledy piggledy across the rug. I’ve cleaned the area 900 times, hoping to get a pristine picture for the room we’ve worked hard to curate, but pristine is impossible in this new life, so we’ll settle for a more nuanced form of perfection—one that includes toys askance and strewn socks and crumpled hoodies and opened drawers.

Just this morning, I was reflecting on the week and wondering if my life has become boring. But then Hudson took his index finger and placed it into the basin of the spoon to remove the last stubborn bit of peanut butter, and brought it gleefully to his mouth. It’s the first time he’s done that. In the past, he’s been bested by the spoon protecting that last bit of peanut butter. But today, he’s figuring out his dexterity, his utility, his ingenuity.

It dawns on me with a little relief: I haven’t become boring, I’ve become acute. Things that weren’t noteworthy to me a year ago—a spoonful of peanut butter, a dishwasher filled with clean dishes, the word “Star,”–have been given new life because it’s easier to notice them from the lens of a one-year-old noticing them for the first time. They’re all new again and they’re all sublime. Nothing could be boring about the way Hudson points at a star and says “Stir!”

Our new life is lightly coated in graham cracker dust. Hudson Trails. They’re sticky, but sweet. Yesterday, Hudson left a graham cracker for himself in a drawer, and this morning, he remembered it.

There’s nothing boring about watching your child remember something for the first time. He returned to the drawer, and, finding it still there, he pounded the Graham cracker into dust with a delighted open palm, then worked for many minutes sticking graham crumbles to his sticky fingers so they could make eventual way to his mouth. Crumbs covered the meadow rug and stuck to his grin.

Graham cracker dust is our new version of looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. Nothing is so bad when coated with gold.