When I taught preschool (many years ago) counting heads was an ongoing activity. On the playground, on field trips, at naptime; we'd count heads everywhere. Nevermind that sometimes I had no idea how many kids were in attendance
that day.. If one was missing, as long as we'd been counting all day,
we'd know it. So now, even at home, I count my kids.
Every morning when I wake up, I walk through the house, counting heads.
New babies are often included in the headcount before they're born, which sometimes gives me a split second of panic "One's missing!" But alas, that one hasn't even been born yet.
Twice now, days before a positive pregnancy test, I have accidentally miscounted, and in a moment of panic, thought one was missing. I'm wondering if in some way I might have "known." Intuition, maybe.
Lately my girls have been sticking together in groups of two, so I've been counting by twos. At this point we're not planning to have more, but the idea of counting one extra seems far different from the idea of counting an extra two!
We do a 'sound off' in birth order every time we get in the car. Seems like when we added the fifth child, I couldn't just immediately see if everyone was there! Now with 6, the habit is firmly established. Hopefully, we'll never lose anybody.
A sound off is good. A friend of mine grew up in a large family and they had a whistle off. The children could all be in different aisles of the grocery store but whenever Mom would whistle a little chirp, each child would whistle in response. i can't whistle but it sounded really neat.
Mom Types 
