Jenna Bush Hager is every mom exhausted from assembling her kids’ toys
After Jennifer Garner shared a hilariously relatable video of herself struggling to neatly put a sleeping bag back into storage, TODAY co-hosts Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb lamented their own struggles as moms: assembling kids’ toys, a process which invites more whispered four-letter words than any parent ever wants to admit out loud.
“That’s all of us, with every toy, every jar,” Bush Hager began on the March 1 episode, with Kotb highlighting the all-too-real moment when your kid or cat pees on a comforter and you have to reassemble the duvet cover after immediately washing it.
Then, Bush Hager went further, going on a rant about her 4-year-old son Hal’s holiday gifts that every parent will instantly relate to. “So, what about on Christmas morning, Hal received a Paw Patrol tent because he’s into [spinoff] Rubble and Crew. Here comes the tent that’s about $9.99.”
“Do you know how long it took?” she continued. “How many people it took to set that tent up? It’s like, put the cord in this thing with this thing and they don’t fit, and you’re like, ‘Wait, does this thing go here?’ And then to break it down?”
“No,” Kotb replied, laughing. “You’d have to throw it away after a while.” Bush Hager quipped, “No, I know. And then that’s bad for the environment.”
It seems Bush Hager’s frustration doesn’t end there, especially when her husband, Henry Chase Hager, dips out and leaves her with the responsibility of LEGO assembly. “What about when somebody gives your kid—and no offense, I love a LEGO, I know it’s good for our kids’ brains,” she said. “[But] they give a LEGO [set], which Henry’s like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait, Hal and I are gonna do this LEGO set together.’ And then it’s a Monday and Henry is nowhere to be found and Hal said, ‘Can we do the LEGO set?’”
“It’s for [ages] 8+ and he’s 4, and you’re reading the instructions like, ‘A to B—where are my glasses—C to D?’” she continued. “And you’re trying. He’s looking at you like there’s something wrong with your fine motor skills when there [is] something wrong with my fine motor skills and I don’t wanna be doing that on a Monday. I want to be laying in bed watching Paw Patrol. In a tent I’ve closed in a closet.”
Both Kotb and Bush Hager agreed that sometimes they just leave the toys in the box, with Bush Hager concluding, “It is hard to put all that together. By the way, the sleeping bag just gets thrown in the bottom of the closet.” And moms everywhere just sighed deeply, nodding their heads in agreement and understanding.
