My oldest daughter has been making her way around the sun for a little over three laps now. She can count to ten with real confidence, pointing at each object in turn. One. Two. Three... But ask her how many birds are on the wire, or how many chocolate chips she wants, and the answer is almost always five. Five could mean five. It could mean eleven. It could mean forty. Five, in the developmental semiotics of my three-year-old, is the denomination that stands in for "a lot." The specific quantit
