Pups - One Month Old

Our pups are one month old now.  It is amazing how quickly they grow and change - so different from humans.  They romp around now and chomp on each other's tails and noses.  They whine when they can see their mom outside of the pen, but can't reach her.  They explore anywhere we'll let them go -all over the yard, the basement, everywhere - and then suddenly plop down and fall asleep, right under a bush. 
I'm linking to a video of the pups this afternoon, having their meal and playing.

Fight vs. Flight...aka Panic vs. "Reasonable-ness"

This past Friday, I did not have recess duty.  One of the joys that I discovered last year was getting to see L at recess and see her interacting/playing without watching over her shoulder.  At any rate, I didn't have duty on Friday.  There was a storm front that was supposed to move in at some point during the day and it hadn't hit us yet - not anything big, just some wind, maybe some rain.  The kids had been outside about 5 minutes when I could hear a STAMPEDE in the hallway and they all came rushing in the doors and into the classroom with much commotion. A couple of them were crying, L included, because they thought it was a tornado.  Apparently the storm front had a very defined line, and they watched it approach while they were outside, and it was VERY windy when it hit.  It was carrying quite a bit of dirt from the nearby fields and so it made the storm front very visible, plus they all got dirt in their eyes.  So I calmed everyone down, explained that it was just strong wind, no rotating.  The recess teacher came in and explained that the kids were like lemmings - as soon as one of them freaked out about the wind, they ALL freaked out and stampeded into the building as if their lives were on the line, with much screaming of "tornado!" and waving of arms in the air.

So...L and I are taking a walk last night.  As we walk, she decides to tell me about the whole recess/storm incident.  She is a verbal processor, and often has to tell about an event a couple of times in excruciating detail before she's really done getting it out of her system.  So, she's explaining how she was beside the rock climbing wall and she & her friends could see the brown wall of wind approaching.  She said that it was like living during the Dust Storms, watching it get closer and closer.  "And then Mrs. J blew her whistle early and told us to hustle and line up.  And it was like my reasonable-ness got shoved into the back little space in the back of my head (demonstrating head divided into about 1/3s here, and pointing at back third) and the panic just took over the rest of my head.  And when the panic takes over the rest of my head, I can only think about the panic.  And so even though I KNEW that it was probably only a shelf cloud, not a wall cloud (Thanks, Dad, for being a storm watcher and teaching some identification skills!) and that it wasn't rotating, my panic took over!"
Yep, that about sums it up!