It's tough to protect your kids, even as a dutiful dad.

Daughter Bailey is nearly 20 months old and insists on doing everything herself.

She'd probably try to drive the car if I would let her.

She has mastered the small merry-go-round at a local fast-food restaurant.

As the three-horse merry-go-round whirls to the music, Bailey climbs on and off one of the plastic horses or stands precariously close to the edge, holding onto a striped pole.

She flashes one of her don't-worry-dad smiles at me as I try to avoid looking like a nervous father.

But it's hard. It's particularly so when I consider that Bailey's role model is her older sister, 5-year-old Becca.

Becca has learned to jump onto the merry-go-round while it's in motion. The other day she was hanging off the side of the contraption, oblivious to the possibility that she might fall on her head.

I had taken the kids to the fast-food joint all by myself.

Joni wasn't around to chaperone the outing and see to it that they didn't wind up buried in the ball pit.

Bailey and Becca had the play area to themselves at first.

Becca soon had Bailey buried up to the neck in those plastic balls. It wasn't long until she had pushed and pulled Bailey through an opening in the ball pit and into a tube-like maze.

I tried not to think about possible injuries. The trouble with being a journalist is that you see all those kid-injured-while-combing-hair stories that come across The Associated Press wire.

You know that something bad certainly could happen in a fast-food play area and you'd have to plow through all those plastic balls to save your kids.

Fortunately, no heroics were required and Bailey didn't end up stuck in the green tube.

I was relieved that she didn't try to emulate Becca, who took to climbing the mesh walls and diving into the ball pit.

With a little more practice, I'm convinced Becca could be in the ball-pit Olympics. Bailey, however, isn't ready for that.

But I'm sure it won't be long before she too wants to plunge head-first into the balls.

You can only do so much to protect your children even in the relative safety of a ball pit.

Safety isn't the only thing parents have to worry about. There's also little things like securing cupcakes for your children's day-care party.

Our friend, Kathy, raced all around town the other day looking for cupcakes for just such a party.

It seems there was a cupcake shortage in Cape Girardeau. The cupboards were bare. All of the bakeries were out of them.

She finally had to venture into a huge discount store and settle for frozen cupcakes.

By all accounts, the party went fine and the kids didn't use the cupcakes as hockey pucks.

But it's just stuff like this that gives parents gray hair.

Fortunately, frozen cupcakes do thaw. You could thaw a whole truckload of frozen cupcakes in the time it takes to get Bailey and Becca out of the ball pit and off the merry-go-round.

I had to carry Bailey screaming from the restaurant the other evening as she didn't want to leave her spinning world.

But once outside, she quickly calmed down after I bribed her with a soft drink.

I counted it as a successful outing in that no blood was shed and we all managed to keep our feet on the merry-go-round of life.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.