An Iowa congressman and his wife gave two little girls a forever family

As Iowa's newest congressman, Zach Nunn has spent restless nights in Washington, D.C., lying on an air mattress plopped on the carpeted floor of his congressional office.

For the father of six children, it's a cheaper alternative than renting an apartment. Besides, he's used to it.

Back home in Bondurant, Iowa, Nunn and his wife, Kelly, have traded places sleeping on the floor next to his youngest daughters’ bedsides to comfort the two girls, 2-year-old Aliya and 3-year-old Jayna.

The girls, who share a biological mother, have experienced night terrors from fear, anxiety and trauma during a stressful adoption process that has sometimes prompted one of them to wake at night screaming.

"I love serving my community. I love serving in the military. But the No. 1 priority for me is to be a good husband and a good dad," Nunn said.

On Wednesday, the Nunns officially adopted the two girls at an early morning Disney princess-themed adoption hearing on the Polk County (Iowa) Justice Center’s second floor as winds blew beyond the building's glass walls.

How a high school crush became a blended family

Nunn and his wife, Kelly, met as students at Southeast Polk High School in Pleasant Hill, which serves suburban Des Moines and rural Polk County students.

“He always dressed really nice for school. He carried a briefcase. He was like total nerd,” Kelly Nunn said. “I had a crush on him, though, but we never dated in high school.”

After high school, he attended Drake University, earning graduate degrees from the Air Command and Staff College and the University of Cambridge. He completed combat missions in the U.S. Air Force and worked in national defense and cybersecurity.

Kelly stayed in Iowa, got married to someone else, and had two children: Addisyn, who is now 15, and Canon, who is now 13.

“We’re a blended family — my two oldest are from my first marriage,” she said in a mid-February interview.

Following Kelly’s divorce, she added Zach on Facebook, and he messaged her. They started talking after Nunn asked for Kelly, who is a photographer, to shoot updated portraits. Then, during an August trip home, he took her on a date.

“I’ll still pay you for the pictures, but I was wondering if I could take you to the GOP debate. I have an extra ticket,” she recalled him saying during that time. It was the Iowa Straw Poll Debate in Ames in August 2011.

They started dating long distance, as Nunn worked from Washington, D.C., in cybersecurity, before Kelly and her two oldest children moved to D.C. for one year. The two married in 2013 and returned to Iowa.

In 2015, the Nunns welcomed another child, Olympia, and then added Selwyn in 2019 before the family began fostering their youngest daughters in the winter months of 2021.

'It had kind of been on my heart,' Iowa congressman's wife says

Kelly Nunn said she had wanted to begin fostering children for some time.

“It had kind of been on my heart to want to do it,” Kelly said. “I was waiting and, honestly, I don’t even think I had talked to Zach about it.”

Kelly wanted to wait until her biological children were out of the toddler stage to pursue adoption. In May 2021, she received a call in the middle of the night from one of the biological parents, asking if the family could take both girls.

When the state removed the girls because of parental issues, the Nunns took the next step, asking their other children if they were comfortable with bringing new siblings into the home. Each responded well to the idea.

"They were on board with it, which is a testament to young kids, recognizing these little girls needed a home and that, for me, was what convinced me that this was not only the right call, but that there was a bigger plan in place than what we had," Zach said.

The Nunns decided to begin fostering the little girls in hopes of giving them stability and keeping them together. The girls moved in with the Nunn family in December 2021.

“The only consistency they’ve had in their lifetime is each other,” Kelly said. “In my heart, I think that the most important thing is that those two stay together."

During an interview in his Locust Street office the day before the adoption hearing, the congressman talked more about the couple's motivation to adopt both girls and what could come next.

"I think it not only hit a heartstring with her," Zach said of Kelly, "but she felt like the only thing these girls have known was each other, and to pull them apart from each other would just be trauma on top of trauma."

"I'm smart enough to know that I'm still dumb about what the next 10 years is going to look like for these girls or 15 years for these girls."

The Nunns are still learning about the little girls, like the differences in their hair textures, Zach said. Jayna is biracial and Aliya "looks like she could be ours. She's blond hair, blue eyes, looks a lot like our 4-year-old," Kelly said.

"Part of it is recognizing, helping Jayna recognize, that she's special and unique in a way that's maybe different from her siblings," Zach said. "The other aspect of it is that I think it has made Jayna even more confident in who she is.

"Initially, she had a lot of self-doubt about who she was and it was obvious to her, even as a 2-year-old, that she was different from the rest of the family at least in skin color. And now, I think she's very proud of who she is. She loves her brown hair. She loves her big brown eyes."

Why policy turned personal for Iowa's freshman congressman

A February 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about foster care in Iowa found that 4,144 children were in foster care, while 1,004 Iowa children awaited adoption in 2021, the most recent numbers available.

Nunn, who is a co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, said he joined the bipartisan caucus to focus on addressing issues in the foster care system nationally and in Iowa that he and his own family have learned about since going through their own adoption experience.

On Tuesday, before his daughters' adoption hearing, the congressman unveiled legislation called The Fight for Families Act, aimed at making permanent the Federal Adoption Tax Credit, which his office said would make sure that the tax credits for "special needs" kids never sunset.

Under the legislation, families who adopt a special needs child could claim the full nonrefundable tax credit of $14,890 regardless of how much in adoption expenses they have accrued, Nunn's office said.

A child is determined to have special needs if the state determines they can't or shouldn't be returned to a parent's home and the child probably won't be adoptable without assistance provided to the adoptive family.

"As the tax code is currently written, low and middle-income families who may not have $14,890 in tax liability are disadvantaged," the office said in a statement. "Our bill would help low and middle-income families in need of additional assistance in order to adopt."

The congressman said the bill will help incentivize folks such as grandmothers or low- and middle-income families to overcome the initial financial challenge of bringing a new member into the family.

"Let's be very clear: This already exists particularly for families with means because they can write it off," Nunn said.

On adoption day — the Nunn family grows

Wednesday morning, a coronation was set in a downtown Des Moines courtroom during an adoption finalization hearing presided over by District Associate Judge Kimberly Ayotte.

Surrounded by their older brother and sisters, Jayna and Aliya were adopted — and crowned, replete with Disney dresses, as the newest Nunn family princesses.

"You get that call in the middle of the night that says your life is going to change forever, and you know the answer is going to be 'yes' before you even get to the end of it," Zach said at the hearing.

"The girls have grown so much since they came to live with us a year and a half ago," Kelly said during sworn testimony.

Jayna snacked on Goldfish crackers and Aliya colored in a book with a box of crayons while each of them sat on their siblings' laps. They unwrapped lollipops and occasionally interrupted to talk with a sea of over two-dozen remote and in-person guests.

It was a fairytale ending for Iowa's freshman congressman and his family.

"It's taken a million mini-miracles to get to this point," he said.

And two little girls got a new forever family.

Jay Stahl is an entertainment reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow him on Instagram or reach out at jstahl@gannett.com.