Jenna Bush Hager‘s family vacation to Rome took a lot out of her 6-year-old son, Hal.
Bush Hager returned to Today on Tuesday, September 2, after taking over two weeks off from the NBC morning show. She dished all about her family’s Italian getaway at the top of Tuesday’s Today With Jenna & Friends episode, sharing the funny tendencies her son had while traveling around the historic European city.
“We went to the Vatican, and Hal was able to hang there. … He would kind of doze [off],” Bush Hager revealed. Her guest host, Willie Geist, came to Hal’s defense, stating, “Jet lag is no joke for anyone. But when you’re a young child, it’s, like, times 10.”
While Hal would frequently “fall asleep” in The Eternal City, he also enjoyed showing off his Italian-speaking skills. “He also spoke so [well]. He’d be like, ‘Grazie mille!’” Bush Hager said of her youngest child. “He would do it — we got home, and he’s like, ‘Grazie mille! Buongiorno!’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh. Maybe we just move to Italy and make Hal Hager Italian.”
Bush Hager shares Hal and her two daughters — Mila, 12, and Poppy, 10 — with her husband, Henry Hager. She previously included several snaps of Hal taking a snooze in an August 26 Instagram post featuring pics from the family’s trip.
Courtesy of Jenna Bush Hager/Instagram
“We ❤️ Roma! We will miss our home outside of Rome! @romecavalieri,” she wrote alongside the montage of photos, the first of which featured the family of five posing for a group photo while visiting the Vatican Museums.
On Jenna & Friends, Bush Hager also recalled learning of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce‘s engagement while in Italy. “When it happened, I got so many texts — including from Talia [Parkinson-Jones], who works with us — where I was like, ‘Has something bad happened? Why did I just get a million texts?’” she told Geist. “I’m like, ‘Oh, Taylor and Trav.’”
Bush Hager’s kids celebrated the celebrity couple by throwing “a little engagement party that night,” after which she had a “big anxiety dream” over not being able to discuss the pop culture moment on the show. (Jenna & Friends aired prerecorded episodes featuring past segments and interviews during Bush Hager’s absence.)
“[In my dream,] I was late for work and I was like, ‘But we have to talk about Taylor and Travis! And I’m late!’” Bush Hager explained. “And then, I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, no, no. I don’t have work today.’”
Today With Jenna & Friends, Weekdays, 10 a.m. ET, NBC