Love is Exponential

Kids can squabble over anything. Today, the issue was who got to be unbuckled first when we were getting out of the car. Which led to a discussion of whether Mother loves one child more than another. Lily claimed that, because she is oldest, I have to love her most, and there is less love available for each child who joins the family. I explained that, in fact, the more children a mother has the MORE love she has to give to each one.
I told the children that if we pretend love is made of apples, when you have one child you have 1 apple of love. With each additional child, the amount of love the mother has available to share out among the children doubles. So with two children, there are two apples of love; with 3 children, there are 4 apples, with 4 children, there are 8 apples, with 5, there are 16 apples, and so on. If I am doing my math right, my mother must have had 512 apples of love to share out among her 10 children.