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Sasha and Malia Obama with Michelle and Barack during visit to Yosemite Park© GrosbyGroup

Malia and Sasha Obama’s dad Barack on having the girls home full time

The Obamas no longer have an empty nest


UPDATED MAY 15, 2020 3:28 PM EDT

 Barack Obama  was a proud empty nester when his daughters  Malia  and  Sasha  went off to college – now he’s changing his tune. The former POTUS and his wife  Michelle Obama ’s daughters returned home from school due to the coronavirus in March. According to Yahoo, during a chat with former staffers, the 58-year-old dad revealed that life without sports is “driving him nuts,” but the upside of everything is that his two girls are “stuck having dinner with me.”

barack michelle obama© @barackobama
Barack Obama revealed that having Sasha and Malia home from college “forces them to eat dinner with me”

Michelle echoed her husband’s sentiments in March, when she opened up about Malia, 21, and Sasha, 19, officially moving back in. “I shouldn’t have boasted about that,” she told her friend Ellen DeGeneres during a phone call. “The Gods were getting me back. They’re back. Everybody’s home. The girls are back because colleges are now online. They’re off in their respective rooms doing their online classes and ignoring us.”

The Becoming author added that most of the time she doesn’t know where her husband is, and that’s fine with her. Michelle also shared how her family is staying occupied. “The positive side for us, it has forced us to continue to sit down with each other and have real conversations,” she shared. “Really ask questions and figure out how to keep ourselves occupied without TV’s or computers. It’s a good exercise in reminding us that we just don’t need half of the stuff that we have, when times are tough, having each other, having your health, we can do with a lot less.”

Sasha Obama, Malia Obama© Getty Images
Sasha and Malia Obama have returned home from their respective colleges because of coronavirus

Sasha, started her freshman year at the University of Michigan. Malia is years into her tenure at Harvard. It’s no secret that the former president is just like any other father when it came to dropping his daughters off at school. In 2017, Barack revealed that the experience was a little like “open heart surgery.” In 2019, Michelle opened up about the emotions that came when they dropped off their baby girl off at school. “When the emotions come is when we‘re getting in our cars and getting on a plane and leaving our babies and they’re going somewhere where they now live. That’s when it hits you,” Michelle told Oprah during her book tour.

“We all start choking up. We all try to hold it together... and then me and Barack , we bawled like babies. You know, Barack, has that ugly, loud cry... he did that at Malia’s graduation. We‘re sitting there, he had his sunglasses on, and speeches are happening, and then you hear [sobbing sounds].”