Five

My three year old son is not a great counter. Sometimes he'll do it perfectly -- today he counted wheels on his train -- and sometimes he'll count the same object multiple times until he gets a nice, large number he likes. Sometimes when he does this I think he's just being silly, and knows perfectly well how to count, but it is hard to tell.

Right now, however, he thinks five is a really big number, and uses it the way we would use "a million." Ask him how many of something he wants, and he'll say "five," drawing the word out in this husky voice he reserves for the purpose. Like, I'm asking for infinity, let's see if I can get it. How many jellybeans do you want? Fiiive. Sure, kid, if five seems like the grandest amount of jellybeans you can imagine, you can have that.