Sleep and black pens

My morning started with my poor little girl trying her damnedest to stay home and sleep in. Usually in these instances I eventually give in and let her sleep. It's not worth the impending explosion. She's often up until around 11-12pm, if we're lucky and she's had a calm but busy day, it's 10pm, but even then I think she's faking it and have seen her open her eyes to see if I have left. It's really not that late for a 10 year old, (According to the sleep people 9.25 to 11 is sufficient and she gets between 7 and 8hrs), if that 10 year old doesn't wake up every few hours. I hear her toss and turn and flop about, she gets up for a drink, or even a snack when she thinks I'm sleeping. God only knows if she goes back to sleep  right away or ends up reading once again. She enjoys sleep and is frustrated by her inability to sleep.

At 8:20 I went up to get her. We have someone working with us to help alleviate some of the stress and make things run smoothly, and she helped set a more flexible routine that has it so the kidlette wakes at 7:30am, but can sleep till 8am if needed, so 8:20am was really pushing it. I told the kid she wouldn't be sleeping the day away if she chose to stay home, she'd get to sleep in, but would have to do some chores to make up for it as she was able to go, just choosing not to. She seemed OK with it, until 8:33 when she came downstairs crying and slamming her bedroom door.by the time I got my hands dried off (I do dishes so I have something to keep me busy otherwise I'd go get her sooner and things would explode) and to the front door, she had both socks on (Which is weird on it's own - she refuses to wear them) and was pulling on her boots. She was determined to go today. She needed to get something from school, something important.

I had to take her boot from her hand and ask her what was so important that she had to go. A black pen. She has been drawing comics lately and NEEDS a black pen to do it, and since she was unable to find any in the places she asked me to look, she knew we had none at home and had to go to school to get one. I had to explain to her she had no lunch made, and although her aunt accidentally stole mine on good Friday, it was part of a pair, and we had two similar to that set so there had to be at least 3 black pens in the house. Worst case scenario, we'd go buy some.

It seems so minor, a pen brought her to tears, but these things are important to her because they are one of the few things that calm her down, and we all need her to stay calm. She's like my mini, pink hulk, you wouldn't like her when she's angry.