After the relative success of our New York trip, we decided to take Westley to North Bay for the long weekend. With a short stop for Westley’s first McDonald’s hashbrown, we settled into our beautiful AirBnB private retreat stocked with Magna-Tiles, toy trains, Lego, and books galore. After sharing some camerones empanizados and pollo al horno at Sol Food, we returned to the house in post-prandial haze for Westley’s nap. We spent the afternoon touring the interactive exhibits at the Bay Area Discovery Museum by the Golden Gate Bridge, ending with an early fireside dinner of chowder, fish and chips, and scrumptious warm buttered crab roll at Fish. We visited Muir Woods the next morning, sticking to the main trail and thankful for the more rugged stroller we borrowed from our hosts as we soaked in the quiet and majesty of the redwoods amidst Westley’s intermittent shouts of “eat,” “no daddy,” and “up-a-now”. He fell asleep on the way to lunch, so we tried to nap in the car with him. Once we carb-loaded at Piazza D’Angelo, we hit up local playgrounds like Boyle Park and Sycamore Park, enjoying sandboxes, intercoms, and catkins. Dinner at Sammy Hagar’s El Paseo consisted of spicy deep fried quail, mushroom risotto, and black cod in coconut milk which were solid across the board. With my persistent back pain and Melody’s sore throat, we took a leisurely stroll around Sausalito Monday morning before capping it with good chickpea soup and poached eggs in mushroom broth at Cibo. A final nap proved fruitless, so we packed up and headed out, stopping for CB2 and CB outlet shopping, and dined on Korean food at Pacific East Mall before returning home. We’ll have to see what other road trips we can do now that Westley’s nearly two.

We rang in the new year with lots of family time and a gift membership to the California State Railroad Museum. On Saturday, after visiting the Yolo County Library to get Westley’s first library card, we drove to Old Sac to check out the highly-rated museum. Westley enjoyed wandering between locomotives and exploring the dining and sleeping cars. But he was most excited by the toy train exhibit and play area. After parallel play with Brio, Melissa and Doug, and Thomas the Tank trains amidst other rowdy toddlers, we strolled around Old Sac and snacked on mini donuts before heading home. We spent New Year’s Eve feasting at our favorite local Chinese joint, but Melody fell asleep before the televised ball drop. We spent New Year’s Day exploring the playgrounds of Davis – Rainbow City, Willow Creek Park, and Playfields Park, where Westley climbed, swung, and slid on various play structures. With his new ability to awkwardly smile on command, I was awarded with plenty of photo ops and lots of daddy pride. We also returned to PC gaming with Dishonored 2. Playing this time as the deposed empress Emily Kaldwin, we returned to first-person stealth action through the steampunk sequel, and basked in the warmth generated by my desktop computer.