Sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, Emily apparently entered into a short-term lease agreement with Satan. It may have been brokered without her awareness, as she is claiming ignorance and the non-binding nature of a contract entered into before age 18, and I have my suspicions about the use of Tom & Jerry cartoons as a portal for such transactions.

Be that as it may, she spent the majority of Saturday convincing me that there's a good reason why many animals eat their young, and reminding me of one of my central rules of parenting: You always have to love your children, but you don't have to like them all the time. And on Saturday, I disliked her with a vengeance.

Then, around 6:00 p.m., the lease expired. She was suddenly polite and fun and sweet again, and we made it through the rest of the evening without incident; no small feat when there wasn't a single consecutive hour through the rest of the day in which I didn't have to repeat myself, apply a consequence, or glare sternly.

Kids are hard work.