National Catholic Register Bloggers feed from Jennifer Fulwiler

Father, We're Ready for that Homily on Contraception Now

2012-02-22

By Jennifer Fulwiler | A couple of weeks ago, our priest gave a homily about contraception. While speaking about the Health and Human Services mandate, our associate pastor, Fr. Jonathan Raia, made a few allusions to the fact that the Church believes that contraception is bad. There were over a thousand people packed into the building, and a slight but noticeable …

8 Reasons to Turn Out the Lights During Lent

2012-02-15

By Jennifer Fulwiler | Shortly after I converted to Catholicism, I found myself hopelessly overwhelmed. I had three children under age three, a seemingly endless to-do list, and regularly felt like I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I’d begun to deal with my stress by spending too much time on the internet, and my prayer life had become …

How Princess Fairy Tales Taught Me to Dream

2012-02-8

By Jennifer Fulwiler | I walked into the toy store with three of my little girls in tow, there to pick out a birthday gift for an upcoming party. We arrived at the section for children their ages, and I saw a display of lovely educational toys. “Look, girls!” I exclaimed, “Hand-crafted wooden puzzles! A children’s binocular set—it even comes with …

Why My Big Family Is Not Overpopulating the Earth

2012-02-1

By Jennifer Fulwiler | Now that our fifth baby is seven months old, my husband and I are often asked: “So…are you done now?” I usually share my thoughts on how we approach the question of future children, which everyone understands is a long way of saying “No.” This is inevitably brings the conversation to an awkward end, my acquaintance mumbling …

Why I Don't Worry About Paying for My Kids' College Educations

2012-01-25

By Jennifer Fulwiler | “Oh my, you certainly have your hands full!” said the lady in line behind me at the grocery store. She asked the kids’ ages, and when I reported that they were 7, 5, 4, 2 and seven months, she shook her head with a sympathetic smile and said, “I bet the thought of paying for college keeps …

A Night Owl Asks: Is it Objectively Better to Get Up Early?

2012-01-18

By Jennifer Fulwiler | The alarm clock strikes six, and an explosion of sound shatters the stillness of the darkened house. Once again the kids have been playing with the radio dials, and instead of waking to quiet contemporary jazz, I am bombarded at full volume by the voice of the announcer at the local Tejano station, who is shouting in …

Moms of Young Children: The Time to Thrive Is Now

2012-01-11

By Jennifer Fulwiler | A friend who’s a mom of multiple young children recently emailed me about her New Year’s resolutions. She told me about an exciting nutrition and fitness plan she’d undertaken starting January 1, and then talked about some of the obstacles she’s facing, in particular how to find the time for this project. I dashed out a knee-jerk …

Catholic Bloggers Share Their Top Book Recommendations

2012-01-4

By Jennifer Fulwiler | One of my favorite projects of each New Year is to review my bookstore wish list and decide what I want to read over the next 12 months. This year I wanted to make sure my list was better than ever, so I emailed a few of my blogging friends and asked: If you could recommend just …

5 Simple Steps to Get Your New Year Off to a Great Start

2011-12-30

By Jennifer Fulwiler | New Year’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. It’s a Marian feast day, it falls during the celebrations of the Christmas season, and it marks the start of a brand new calendar year. Whether or not I write a detailed list of resolutions, I always use this day as an opportunity to get things in order …

Is the Vocations Crisis Anything New?

2011-12-28

By Jennifer Fulwiler | I’ve always been a reader of historical nonfiction, and since my conversion I’ve developed a whole new level of interest in this genre. Since pretty much any story set in the West before the mid-16th century takes place in a Catholic culture, each tale is an opportunity to learn more about Church history. As I pore over …

My Favorite Links of 2011

2011-12-26

By Jennifer Fulwiler | Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a lovely celebration of the birth of Christ. Ours was a beautiful, prayerful day: the children were filled with gratitude for even the simplest gifts, and joyfully shared their new toys with one another. I felt completely satisfied that I had chosen just the right presents for everyone, and was …

"It's Christmas!"

2011-12-23

By Jennifer Fulwiler | I’ll never forget the first time I went to midnight Mass. It was a few years ago, when our third child was still an infant. In retrospect, it was not the best year for us to try this; considering that we were already getting precious little sleep with a three-month-old and two toddlers in the house, we …

A Different Kind of Christmas List

2011-12-21

By Jennifer Fulwiler | It’s the Wednesday before Christmas, and crunch-time is upon us. In general it’s been a pretty smooth December over here (all that overanalysis about how to keep things in perspective during Advent actually paid off!) but this week I find myself racing around to tie up a few loose ends that slipped through the cracks earlier this …

Pro-Lifers, the Tide Just Turned

2011-12-19

By Jennifer Fulwiler | As you’ve probably heard by now, the Duggar family lost their precious daughter Jubilee Shalom on December 8th at 20 weeks gestation. They held a memorial service for her last Wednesday, which has generated even more discussion than the original announcement that they were expecting their 20th child. At the service, the Duggars chose to display some …

Why Are There No Catholic Mom Bloggers on this Top 100 List?

2011-12-16

By Jennifer Fulwiler | Earlier this week Babble released its list of the Top Mom Blogs of 2011, and my email inbox has been abuzz ever since. My friends and I have been reading mommy blogs since we first became parents, and so we took great interest in this collection. First, we all agreed that Babble did a good job: These …