And it sounds like...

We took Makena today for a speech evaluation at All Children's in Tampa.  It took months to get an appointment.  She has a little lisp and is still having issues pronouncing some words.  Nothing urgent or of major concern, but we wanted to get it checked out before it became an issue.

The evaluation was very thorough.  The Speech Language Pathologist spent some time asking me questions and observing Makena playing.  Then she went through a long photo book to get Makena to say certain words so she could listen for issues.  Then they both went through a book and said sentences.  First the SLP would say it and then Makena would repeat the sentence.  Finally they practiced some sounds and tongue exercises.

The ruled out any physical issues causing the lisp and hesitation.  Because the problem is minor, they spent some more time with me going over techniques to work on at home.  She provided me with some photo and word sheets to work on with her, talked about speech training and gave me some tips to help Makena.

We will work on speech training at home and re-evaluate if necessary in 6 months.  I was really impressed with the entire process, even though it was much longer than I thought it would be.  So nice to not be rushed in a medical environment ;)