About a month ago I videotaped our family at dinner and uploaded it for our RDI consultant to see how Bright Eyes was going coping with conversation. This week, I did it again. This was her response:

"Wow, this has really improved! As I watched this, I didn't see him as a person with ASD and struggling but more like a younger child who requires more time for processing and is on a learning curve with all the semantics (meaning), pragmatics (context) and grammatical expression of language and communication." 

It is nice to see improvements, and to have other people see improvements too. His conversation in relaxed, familiar settings is definitely increasing in fluency and capability. His conversation with people around the community and peers... well, that's a whole other story. But hopefully one day I'll be recording feedback like the above for those situations too.