Confused Plants Due to the (early) Warm Weather?

This is what our French Pussy Willow looks like right now:  plenty of new red growth and these big red bulbs ready to burst open full of furry little dots.   We planted it this past season, so I'm not sure if this is what these things look like normally at this point in the season or if the plant is confused due to the unseasonably warm weather a week back.

When Nat and I were driving around over the weekend, we spotted a few little flowers springing up, figuring they were just confused.  Sad to think that everyone might be loosing some spring growth because it is going to come up too early only to be killed by the certain frost left this winter.

It's early February.  Does anyone have any experience with this type of plant/bush?  Are we on track and this is normal?  Or if not, is there something we can do to help it along and maybe slow down the spring awakening?

BTW...looking through the analytics account for this site and the above-linked French Pussy Willow plant post gets a lot of traffic.  But...I'm pretty sure that the creeps that end up here leave pree-tay pree-tay disappointed.