2 "ears" are better than 1

The official report from school is that Noah is actually holding conversations with them and responding to questions occasionally. He's had lots of issues with background noise in his classroom (don't even get me started on THAT situation) and he tended to keep to himself because, in my opinion, he didn't have a clue as to what was going on.
I got to see the improvement with two CIs first hand on Friday when I went to pick up Noah. He was able to hear his 1 on 1 saying goodbye to him and respond appropriately in spite of the facts that there were 2 classes of rowdy second graders in the hallway, he was facing away from her, and he was talking to someone else at the time. Wow!
He also seems to be doing well with just the new ear, although being the bad (read: busy) mom that I am, he hasn't been getting nearly the hour a day of new ear work that we had planned (closer to 30-45 minutes most days, and not at all yesterday). He's much more consistent about repeating the "s" sound from across the room than he was earlier in the week, has no problems answering questions about familiar books or topics, and seems to follow about 90% of conversation (only having trouble when I talk too fast or don't annunciate clearly). He is able to do all his ling sounds with background noise and although he still occasionally mixes up "oooooo" and "mmmmm" with each individual ear, he's getting them every time with the two ears together.
Overall I think he's a superstar and deserves some kind of award for his amazing brain-making-critical-connections abilities. I, on the other hand, am still a little overwhelmed at the have-to-keep-track-of-two-processors-that-aren't-interchangable-with-two-batteries-that-die-at-two-separate-times thing. Not to mention the get-less-sleep-and-do-less-housework-because-you-spend-all-day-Monday-going-to-Northern-VA-for-therapy thing. Maybe I should get an award too!?
I'd settle for a nap and a maid.