The past two months have been fairly exhausting. With his new job, Steve now walks in the door at 7:15, instead of 6:15 every day. He also leaves the house an hour earlier. More parenting and house chores were moved to my side of the ledger.

Both boys are in new schools. I have to pick up Jonah from the high school after sports every day. He has more homework, which needs some minor parental oversight. (He forgot to turn in a homework comparing Hobbes and Locke. ARG. I used to teach classes on Hobbes and Locke!)  Ian is in special ed, so it seems like we have a meeting every two weeks.

Things break. An hour before I hosted a pasta dinner for 15 cross country boys last Friday, water started pouring out of the bottom of the sink. I had to drain 4 pounds of pasta in the laundry room. A broken sink = two visits from the plumber and a trip to Home Depot for a new Delta faucet.

The schedules and the rhythms of the day are off, so I can’t go on autopilot. I have to make lists every morning.

So, I read this article about parental surveillance software with some dread. There’s more to do?

For the iPhone I will soon be buying him, I can get an iPhone Spy Stick, to be plugged into a USB port while he sleeps; it downloads Web histories, e-mails, and text messages, even the deleted ones. Or I can get Mobile Spy, software that would let me follow, in real time, his online activity and geographical location. Also available are an innocent-looking iPhone Dock Camera that would recharge his battery while surreptitiously recording video in his room, and a voice-activated audio monitor, presumably for the wild parties he’s going to throw when his father and I go out of town.

We do spot checks of Jonah’s phone and give long lectures about the lack of privacy on the Internet, but I never went full NSA on his cellphone. Should I?