Tom has started drawing, yanking out markers without warning and scrawling over anything and everything in his path -- the walls, the furniture, his brother.

He's been picturing our family lately, starting with an enormous looping pattern -- three quarters of the page -- that he points to when he finishes and announces as "Da-da!"

He then adds a much smaller group of circles, wedged into the corner by the first. "Ma-ma!" he says.

Finally, he dots the page a few times and claims them as "Foo," which is what he calls Mike, apparently under the impression that he's a temporary variable.

I'd like to think that the size of each doodle is relative to the influence we have on him; a measure of some subtle, unspoken connection that a son has with his father; an innate expression of the secret language of male bonding and blood.

But I suspect he's just going by mass.