You know, I'm normally very good about letting the kids' projects be the kids' projects. I encourage, I suggest, I help when help is requested; but generally I stay out of the way and let the project be what it is.

This time I have met my downfall: fonts.

Connor wrote a paragraph on the battle between the USS Constitution and the HMS Guerriere. I let him type it. I introduced him to MS Word. He has never worked with a word processing program before. He was impressed. He experimented with everything.

My true son.

After he typed in the paragraph, he thought it would be a fun idea to make a whole newspaper, and make it look like a Colonial-era newspaper.

Yippee! Hooray! He wants to write more! He wants to ...

Ooh.

A Colonial-era newspaper.

We need a font for that.

I used to work in publishing. I know fonts. I used to be able to identify fonts on sight. I know that we can get a fairly authentic Colonial-style font. The boy, of course, is content with a straight, modern Caslon.

Oh no, Mommy is not.

If you ever want a good font, you go to The Scriptorium. You go there, and you drool. You spend hours looking through their fonts, because you will find the perfect font. They've got it, oh yes they do.

Unfortunately they've raised their prices. I used to be able to buy a single font from them for less than $10. Now I see nothing for less than $18. What a shame. I can't justify $18 for my child to have a cool font, even if it is historically accurate.

I have no choice. I will spend the weekend searching through all the free font sites on the internet, looking for the one font that will be close enough to Scriptorium's Buccaneer or Boswell, or Adobe's Caslon Antique to make me happy.

Paste the pictures crookedly. Scribble. Draw stick figures. But we will have the right font. Oh yes, it will be mine. I mean, his.

I promise to go back to being laid-back, sane Mom. As soon as I find it.