Anna speaks about her prenatal and postpartum experience with the Italian National Health Service. She also discusses the five-month maternity leave that working women receive.

Anna tells us about the medical exams a woman can choose to do during pregnancy, and some of the problems that can come up during pregnancy and delivery.

Anna describes her delivery, from the first contractions to that magic moment when nothing else matters.

Anna, and her very charming baby, show us an Italian modular transport system and some fun developmental toys.

Anna shows the baby changing area that she's set up in her apartment. She talks about many baby care products, and the segment provides a great lesson in diminutives.

Anna and Marika tell us about their favorite games and how they had fun as children.

Magpies [gazze ladre] in folklore are known to be attracted by shiny things. Rossini's opera La Gazza Ladra recounts the story of Ninetta, a servant girl. She is wrongly accused of stealing the silverware that the family magpie stole.

Ninetta is in prison, condemned to death, and things are looking very bleak, indeed. Don't worry though; in the end, love and justice win out, and everyone except the magistrate lives happily ever after.

Marika and Anna conjugate the verb to be in the simple present, present perfect, and simple past.

Anna and Marika give examples of the past tense of the verb to be.

Marika and Anna go over the future and conditional tenses for the verb essere (to be). The vocabulary review covers the future and the conditional conjugations for this verb.

Anna and Marika take us through the imperative, the subjunctive and the gerund forms of the verb, essere (to be). The subjunctive is used less and less in modern English, so it can be tricky to learn in Italian, but little by little even these forms will become part of your Italian language skills.

Anna and Marika introduce the verb avere (to have) and show us the conjugation in the present, present perfect, simple past and past perfect.

Anna and Marika talk about their love lives, using the remote past and the remote past perfect, as well as the present and past conditional.

Marika and Anna present the verb avere (to have) in the subjunctive mood, which, in Italian, as you'll see, is used when the word che is used as a conjunction. This mood has practically disappeared from the English language.