Jenna Bush Hager’s children nickname her “Biggie.”
On Wednesday’s episode of “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle,” the newscaster said her three children – Mila, 13, Poppy, 10, and Hal, 6 – “brought home” the words “I wish I had left them on my old front door.”
“They call me Biggie,” Hager told co-host Sheinelle Jones. “They’re like, ‘Okay, Biggie!'” And I’m like, “Excuse me?” They said, “Whatever, Biggie! ‘It’s like that.’
The “Sisters First” author, who shares her children with her longtime husband Henry Chase Hager, said her eldest son started calling his father by his name, prompting him to stop using that nickname.
“I said, ‘Mira, stop saying this. Hal is going to school, and the teacher is going to say, ‘Okay, Hal, turn in your homework.'” And he said, ‘No way, Biggie! ”’ Hager, 44, said.
Jones, who had three children with her late husband, Uche Ojie, was shocked by the words and said, “I’ve never heard of anything like that. It breaks my heart.”
Hager revealed that the word “Biggie” comes from “Big Back.”
“She simplified it for Biggie. At first, part of me thought, ‘Oh, that’s creative,’ because…I like humor expressed in words,” she said.
“But I was like, ‘Stop calling everyone Biggie. It’s going to spread,'” Jenna added.
When asked about the origin of the word, Jones, 48, said the nickname “made it even worse.”
Last month, Jenna revealed on her talk show that she banned her eldest daughter Mila from attending a volleyball game after she watched a TV host go too far.
“I was kicked out by a kid,” Hager said, clarifying, “Well, I wasn’t kicked out right away. I was put in a free zone.”
“The score was 6-7, so I thought, ‘Six-seven!'” she recalled. “And Mira was looking at me like this…”
Mimicking her daughter’s icy gaze, Hager added, “I froze up after that. I went to one volleyball game this year.”
The TV journalist said he was hoping for a “thaw” to attend his daughter’s games next season.
