"Wilbur Kase Robinson!" Franny barked as she stopped conducting her frogs. Her son, nearly two, was climbing on top of a very high speaker.
His mother sighed and motioned for Frankie and the others to wait, and just as she got to the speaker, little Wilbur climbed on top and jumped off.
"Wilbur!" Franny raced forth and caught him, just in the knick of time. The toddler giggled and clapped his hands.
"You're like a little monkey," Franny told him, rolling her eyes. Anxiously, she glanced at the clock. She only had a few days before the concert in Central Park, and so far, Wilbur had done a pretty good job of keeping the team from practicing.
"Would you like to go see Daddy?" She asked her son, bouncing him slightly.
"Daddy!" Wilbur agreed, squirming in her arms. "Daddy! Daddy!"
---
Cornelius Robinson, who was still known as 'Lewis' to his best friend and adoptive parents, sat at his desk, tediously going over a set of blue prints. His next invention was at the tip of his tongue, the top of his mind, but he just couldn't figure out what it was exactly. He had dreamed it, like he did many of his projects, and in his dream he had been rising and falling, rising and falling. What could possibly be needed in the world that caused you to rise and fall?
"Daddy!" The door to the lab opened and little Wilbur raced in, followed by his mother, who held his blanket, stuffed dinosaur, sippy cup, and a zip lock bag filled with dry cereal.
"Where are you two off to?" Cornelius asked absent-mindedly, still fingering the blue prints.
"I'm off to finish my music lesson," Franny informed him, setting the goodies right next to her husband's work. "And Monkey here-" she picked up Wilbur under the armpits. "Is going to sit with you for a while."
"Franny," Cornelius sighed, turning his chair around to face her. "I'm very busy. Wilbur'll never let me-" he stopped when his wife gave him a look that meant he'd better shut up fast.
"You're right," he changed his tone. "I do need to look after him once in a while, even if I'm working."
"Good!" Franny chirped. "I'll be in the music room another two hours or so." She gave her son a big squeeze and told the men, "Just buzz if you need me!"
With that, she was gone. Wilbur's eyes were all over the place, and he began to walk around, the way he always did when he was in the lab, and his father knew what was coming. First, he touched everything. As he walked around, his eyes darting to anything and everything that buzzed, blinked, or glittered, his fingers brushed over the various plastics and metal.
"Here champ," Cornelius walked over to him and picked him up. "You want some Cheerios?" He set the boy on the desk before him, and emptied the bag of cereal.
"Lellow!" Wilbur pointed to the blue prints.
"No, not yellow," his father chuckled. "It's blue. It's called a blueprint."
"….lellow!" Wilbur said again, pointing to the red magnifying glass next to it. To twenty-two month old Wilbur Robinson, everything was yellow.
"How many cheerios do you have?" Cornelius scooted the cereal next to him. "Can you count them with me?" He fingered each piece. "One, two, three, four, fiv-Wilbur! Wilbur!" He turned as the little boy climbed down from the desktop and raced over to a humming machine. Like a spider monkey, he climbed on top of it with ease and began dancing on top.
"Wilbur," his father sighed, taking the child and putting him on the floor. "No, no, Son." He patted the machine. "Danger."
"Dinjer," Wilbur repeated, and then immediately scrambled back up on top of it.
"Wilbur!" Cornelius pulled him off halfway. "No, Sir! We're not going to climb Daddy's machines. That's a no-no!"
"No-no!" Wilbur repeated, shaking his finger.
"That's right," his father said, also shaking his finger at the machine. "No-no." He smoothed out the lanky toddler's shirt and kissed him. "Come on, Monkey." He moved back to the desk, and this time, put his son in his lap.
He began to make some illustration changes on the sheet, and then it was ripped out from under his special pencil. Wilbur began shaking the blue prints and sang out, "Ee I ee I oh!" He slithered off his father's lap and ran around in circles with the paper. "Ee I ee I oh!"
"Wilbur…" Cornelius massaged his temples, but decided not to act. If playing with the paper would keep the toddler out of his hair, and not get into any serious trouble, then he would let him.
"Ee I ee I oh?" Wilbur stopped and glanced at the window. The sun shone through, and Wilbur noticed it was opened just a crack. He carefully knelt down to put his paper on the floor, and then toddled over to the window. Looking around, he took an empty crate, turned it over, and pushed it towards the window. He climbed onto the sill and looked outside. The ground was so far down, but outside was his playhouse, and his swing set, and all sorts of fun things to eat like dirt.
"Ee I oh!" He eagerly opened the window the rest of the way, and Cornelius turned around just in time to see his son leaping off.
"Oh my God!" He raced for the window and almost tumbled out himself as he grabbed his son and pulled him back in. "WILBUR KASE ROBINSON!" He bellowed, setting the boy down. "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"
Wilbur knew his Daddy was not just agitated this time, but upset. His bottom lip trembled and he began to wail. "Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!"
"Wilbur!" Cornelius picked him up and showed him the window. "NO NO!" He closed it. "That's danger!"
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!" Wilbur continued to cry. He covered his little face and snot got all over his hands, and his father's.
"Wilbur…" Cornelius sucked air into his cheeks and released it slowly. He glanced at the clock and realized he would never get any real work done with Wilbur around. "Hey, Sport." He uncovered the boy's face and wiped a string of snot from his nose with his hand. "Do you want to go outside?"
" 'Side?" Wilbur eyed the window.
"Yah, Outside," his father said, as they exited the lab. "We'll go play outside."
---
Wilbur's playground was enormous and shaped like a futuristic castle. Cornelius stood by as Wilbur climbed everything, even able to walk up and down the slide without the use of his hands. He really was like some sort of monkey. He fell off of the top, but his father wasn't worried because the colorful, spongy material he'd used in place of mulch when building the play area, sent the boy flying back up to the play fort. His brows furrowed.
Rising and falling, he thought, remembering the dream. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and watched as Wilbur purposefully jumped now, bouncing on the bouncing ground. Rising and falling, he thought again.
He remembered Wilbur nearly sailing out the window. On the ground below, three stories below, would have been hard ground. Wilbur would have been seriously injured, if not killed.
The toddler had accomplished figuring out the store-bought baby locks in the house, so Cornelius had been forced to invent some, that came complete with voice-activated passwords. Wilbur had also been found of racing down the stairs, so Cornelius had invented the travel tubes. In the past year, Cornelius's major inventions had been ones made for his son. Companies went crazy for them, even though the famous inventor had only created them out of convience.
"Rising and falling," he said aloud, still pondering. "That's it!"
---
"How are my boys?" Franny entered the lab that evening, and smiled when she saw little Wilbur asleep on his father's lap as the man busily sketched something on a new sheet of blue prints.
"We had a lot of fun," Cornelius said. "We even went outside for about an hour." He spun his chair around. "And guess what, Franny? I know what we need around the house now!"
"Oh great," his wife rolled her eyes playfully. "Another playground?"
"We need to baby-proof the yard," Cornelius explained. "Make it bounce!" He held up the blueprints. "Look,, I even designed them in kid-friendly shapes and colors, and after the child gets old enough to no longer need them, they can easily be removed with a remote-control."
"Why the yard?" Franny asked skeptically, eyeing the illustration.
"Um, no reason," her husband cleared his throat, glancing at the window from the corner of his eye.
"Well," Franny said, "It's up to you, Dear." She looked at Wilbur. "I'll take him now if you want."
"No, it's alright, Honey," Cornelius dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. "He's fine."
Franny smiled and kissed him. "Thanks." She left the lab.
----
"Well, Champ," Cornelius said softly to the sleeping toddler as he put him in bed. "Come Monday, if you want to jump out the window, be my guess." He chuckled. "Because you'll just be coming right back up." He kissed the sleeping boy. "Monkey."
The End