A summertime run through the playground.

Growing up, summertime meant spending hours outside, playing on jungle gyms and with neighborhood friends, eating ice cold bomb pops and playing hide and seek behind oak trees, even though you could easily be seen.

And we HAD to play outside. There was no running back and forth inside, and there were real consequences “if you let them mosquitoes in my house!” And what kid could pay the electric bill because “y’all are going to let all my cold air out!”

We had to stay outside until nap time or dinner time. In sunshine and heat. All day.

It’s what child psychologists today call “unstructured playtime. ” To us, it was just childhood in the 1980s.

It’s been raining nonstop in the DC area for the past week. Every day there’s some kind of summer derecho that whips up a vicious storm out of nowhere and drops 2 to 3 inches in an hour.

Cooped up in the house, my four-year-old keeps asking me questions nonstop: “When are we going outside?” “Can we play in the backyard?” “Is Jehovah making all the plants grow?” Half listening I answer ‘No,’ ‘maybe’ and ‘apparently’.

Children make quick work of the equipment at the Imagination Playground.

Today, we got a break from the gloom. Clouds parted and the humidity begged off for a few hours. After daycare, we went to one of Prince George’s County Imagination Playgrounds in Mount Rainier, Md.

It was a feast for the mosquitoes. But my kids had a ball. They climbed the ropes like athletes and swung on the swings until they got dizzy.

I handed them my phone and they took pictures of flowers and nature flourishing around them. I felt like the super mommy of my dreams, eschewing tablets and technology to get my kids outside in the wild. Oh, wait, they’re taking pics with my camera phone. And now he’s pulled up You Tube. And he’s sitting on the ground to watch it.

My four-year-old took this picture.

And playtime is over. But they ran and romped, climbed rope ladders and fought over swings for a good hour. Soaking up sunshine and summertime. And it was all good.