Parenting gets harder when kids get a clue.

Tonight was Pete's first tornado warning where he was old enough to understand exactly what was happening, both in the narrow sense that a tornado warning is a warning of a tornado and in the broad sense that our getting him out of bed and going to the basement together is very strange. He was such a tired, scared little thing. Turns out it's hard to explain how everything's totally OK when you are, come to think of it, acting as if your house could be swept off its foundations at any moment.