My little romanticizer

Do all of you know Caillou? I'm thinking it's a no. Caillou is a cartoon character on PBS. We actually found him first in the book series. Penelope loves Caillou. We have a book that has about 7 stories in it and she wants to read all of them. In fact on our camping trip this summer I think I read the same 10 Caillou stories 50 times each. Now there's one small detail about Caillou that many people don't realize. He's Canadian! Yup, the book and tv show come from Canada, which explains this:

There are LOTS of episodes and stories in the winter. Caillou loves the snow. Due to Caillou's love of the snow Penelope has been asking "Is it a snow day?" about 3 or 4 times a week since August. We would groan and say "no, it's a looong looong ways away" and tell her all the things that had to happen before it would snow...Mommy's birthday, Penny's birthday, Papa John and Grandmama's visit, Halloween...and Chris would throw in Thanksgiving which I thought was pretty optimistic. Turns out I was right. Look who got to play in the snow...

Similar to her mommy who romanticizes every activity before it happens and then often has to remember we are not in a novel, the snow did not live up to Penelope's dream. She played for about 10 minutes and decided her hands were cold and the snow was wet. We tried to put on her waterproof mittens, but nope, she wanted her red mittens (what can I say...the purple waterproof ones didn't match. Should I really have expected she'd wear them?) So after 10 minutes of playing outside we decided it was time to come inside to read some Caillou books. It is nice to jump in our Caillou book and romanticize winter without that pesky cold part that happens in real life.  Maybe the next snowfall we'll get enough for sledding and she'll change her mind.