SACRAMENTO — 

For the past two weeks, Gov. Gavin Newsom has done something that's very out of character: He's stayed out of the public eye.

That ended Tuesday when he took part in an economic summit in Monterey, the first official event he's attended since Oct. 27, one that marked the end of an absence that had sparked several days of social media chatter and criticism.

In his opening remarks, Newsom blamed a grueling schedule for taking a toll on his family, telling the audience that his four young children staged "kind of an intervention" during a family dinner before he and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, were scheduled to travel to the United Nations Climate Conference in Scotland.