What the Bella Twins Watch (and Read) With Their Kids

It’s pretty funny that Nikki and Brie Bella had their boys, Matteo and Buddy, just hours apart, in hospital rooms right next to each other. The twins-turned-WWE stars have always been close—born 16 minutes apart and raised on a farm outside Scottsdale, Arizona—but even their inseparable bond doesn’t fully explain that kind of timing. 

“We didn’t plan for it, but we call the boys our spiritual twins because they’re like brothers,” Nikki says. “Buddy is who Matteo asks for the most, like when he wakes up in the morning, he’s the first person he asks about.” 

Buddy is also the one most likely to go into the family business. “He loves it so much,” Brie says. “My daughter Birdie cares more about what the women are wearing. When she found out Bianca Belair makes her own outfits, her mind was blown.” 

And while Matteo shares his cousin’s enthusiasm for female wrestlers—and for luchadors, who Nikki says he’s always in awe of—he’s not too sure about watching what his mom endures in the ring. 

“He doesn’t like me wrestling,” Nikki says. “He’s not crazy about his Auntie Breezy wrestling, either. He doesn’t like us getting hurt. When he’s at a show and I start to get beat up, I can feel his eyes from afar. I was in the ring recently and I remember looking over, because I had never seen his face like that. Just jaw dropped, eyes huge. Like, ‘What did I just watch?’” 

Matteo might have to look away when his mom and aunt team up with Paige to face the villainous faction Fatal Influence at WWE’s Summer Slam event this weekend. In between wrestling matches, here’s what the WWE Hall-of-Famers watch, read, play, and listen to with their kids. 

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Travel and the World Cup

Nikki Bella: My son Matteo is a ham but he’s also obsessed with airplanes and trains and world flags and countries. It’s really cute because instead of wanting to watch cartoons all the time, he always wants to watch YouTube clips. He’ll be like, “Mom, I want to see the 611 train in Virginia,” or “I want to see what Norwegian Airlines looks like flying into Norway.”

This past World Cup, he and I watched almost every game together. It was fun because he loves soccer but also because he knew so many of the countries so we could talk about them too. 

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The Dork Diary series and Little House On The Prairie

Brie Bella: I have two kids. Birdie is 9 and Buddy is 6. Birdie is obsessed with the Dork Diary books. They’re her favorite. She’s also been dabbling into the Little House On The Prairie books so that she can watch the show on Netflix. It’s like when she read the first Harry Potter book and then watched the first Harry Potter movie.

My daughter tells me all about whatever book she’s reading. She’ll go into crazy detail, too, which is cute. 

Now that the kids read on their own, I kind of don’t know exactly what they’re reading. My husband and I will do research on the books, but I don’t sit and read as much to them anymore unless they want me to. 

NB: I’ve already binged Little House on the Prairie. It’s so good.

BB: I really want to binge it with my daughter, but my husband told both of us, “No, she has to read all the books first.”

NB: The show doesn’t go past the first book this season. It almost made me be like, “No! I want more episodes!” because I know what happens but you don’t even really see the third daughter. I don’t remember how many daughters the Ingalls family had, but the third daughter is still a baby at the end of the season.

BB: Well then I’m going to go tell my husband so we can start watching.

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National Geographic Kids

BB: My son just got into chapter books, which is incredible, but he also loves the National Geographic Kids magazines. When it comes to letting them watch stuff—we don’t watch a lot, but when we do, we love the National Geographic channel.

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Toy Story 5 and The One And Only Ivan

BB: When we do  movie night, we try to pick a movie that has a story, that doesn’t move fast, and that feels long enough that they can understand that there’s a beginning, middle, and an end. We just went and watched Toy Story 5, which, I have to say, I loved the meaning.

Another one we loved was The One And Only Ivan, which we watched because my daughter read the book. I ended up bawling my eyes out.

My husband is a big believer that it’s always incredible to read a book first then watch the show or  movie. He feels like it’s good for the kids to see both sides of a story in that way, which I really love. 

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Ron’s Gone Wrong

NB: Recently we watched Ron’s Gone Wrong on Disney+. Even though it’s an older film, it was one of the first ones that Matteo got really into. It’s cute because Matteo will want to watch these shows and movies and then if he doesn’t want to finish it, I’ll go back after he goes to bed and finish it. I’m like, I think I’ve watched more kid movies this past year than anything else.

Ron’s Gone Wrong I liked because of where we’re at nowadays with technology. It had a really great meaning, especially because Matteo has been hearing a lot more about robots and different types of technology lately.

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The Baby-Sitters Club

BB: I loved The Baby-Sitters Club series on Netflix and Birdie got really into those books. She went through them fast. My daughter is the type who, when she comes out for breakfast every morning, she has a book in her hand and as I’m cooking, she’ll sit and read. Even at school, they say Birdie a lot of times will bring a book out to recess so if she doesn’t feel like playing, she’ll sit under a tree and read.

I told my husband Bryan that I feel like she’s going to be an author one day because she comes up with so many stories. She loves writing and she loves reading. 

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Big Hero Six

NB: My son’s a builder. When he’s watching something, he’ll leave in the middle of it because he wants to go build something for whatever’s on. Like, if it talks about a certain place or a certain character, he’ll want to go build that with his Legos. He’s totally an engineer. That is how his brain works.

He’s been playing with things like that since he was a baby. He used to like to take things apart, or for a long time he was into seeing how wheels moved. He’d always have his face on the ground, wanting to look at his toys’ landing gear. 

If something has a train or plane in it, he’ll want to watch it. He loved Big Hero Six because it was about a kid building a robot. That’s a sad one too. I always cry.

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Ella Langley, Benson Boone, and the Gipsy Kings

BB: The kids will always throw out different songs when we’re in the car and we’ll go through different phases when we’re listening to all different genres of music, but it’s all still kind of the same music I’d choose to listen to. Then they’ll hear songs either from movies or shows or from their friends’ houses, and so we’ll get this very interesting blend of songs. As of late, Ella Langley has been a big hit in our car and they’re obsessed with Benson Boone.

NB: My son is obsessed with Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” He sings it probably 15 times a day.

When we’re driving, he’ll always request Spanish music. He’ll ask for Omar’s “Danzo Kaduro,” which I can’t even say right. Shakira is another one of his favorites. One day he said, “Mom, can you play the Gipsy Kings?” And I was like, “The Gipsy Kings? How do you know the Gipsy Kings?,” but he loves them. He always asks for “Baila Me.” 

He’s a Latin lover. His dad does a lot of Latin ballroom dancing, so I feel like that’s where he  heard most of it but he also goes to a school where it’s Spanish speaking and so half of the day is English and the other half is Spanish. They do a lot of dancing, too, like they do folklorico all the time in school. At their graduation this year, the kids were dressed up in sombreros and mariachi outfits and they did a whole folklorico dance. Matteo will always come home and tell me how that’s all he wants to do for the rest of his life. 

He’s just very drawn to all of that. Brie and I are Mexican and when Matteo talks to my dad on the phone, my dad will speak Spanish to him and he just lights up. He smiles ear to ear, he thinks my dad is the coolest thing ever. 

It’s actually funny because he calls my dad “Pool Tata,” and I’m always like “Why Pool Tata,” but it’s because my dad wears his shirt open so Matteo just always assumes he’s going to the pool. 

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Catan

BB: Our family is obsessed with board games, so we’re very into Catan. That’s our favorite one, but then a new one that we’ve loved in the house is called Blokus, which is also a lot of fun. We love Monopoly, too. I think we mostly love games where you take time to think.

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NASA videos

NB: Usually when Matteo is with me, we’ll go days without him using his iPad but in the times that he does ask, I’ll feel like “Okay, it’s fine.” His speech teacher really helped me because she said, “you just put on a timer,” so I’ll give him 30 minutes and it’s crazy because when he sees the timer go off, he never argues. He just hands it over, like “Okay, cool.”

We’re YouTube watchers when we’re using the iPad, so that’s where he gets to watch all his train videos and stuff about airplanes. I used to put NASA videos on and he loved watching how they would talk about building rockets and I would sit there and think, “This is boring.” But he loves it. 

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Train simulators and kitchen science

NB: Right now, Matteo is into train simulators. There’s a few games where you build your trains and then it’s as if he’s the conductor and he can take his train out. He really has to use his brain to think about how to put things together. And I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I let him do those too.

But what I love about my son is that he’s also not obsessed with those kinds of things. He’ll start to do stuff on a screen but then he’ll walk away. He loves being outside. He loves being in the garden beds and getting dirty. He has imagination. He has this playroom and he will just go in there and build stuff. 

He also likes to do what I call science projects, but I’ll let him freely go into my kitchen when he wants. He’s always putting things together. The other day, he made this thing and he really wanted to bake it, and I was like, “Sure.” We ate it at the end and it actually didn’t taste too bad.