Jai Jai Vittala

What's that Jai Jai Vittala, Jai Panduranga!

Me & My wife chant these lines quite often these days...why? That's my daughter's favourite lulaby and magically makes her go to sleep within 5 minutes.

Background:
When my daughter was around 1-2 months old, she would go to sleep not earlier than 1-2 AM. We had been educated to feed her once every 2-3 hours.It used to take anywhere between 30 mins to one hour to complete one feeding cycle. I had to hang around during this time, even though I had no role to play. So if she takes 30 mins to feed, another 30-60 mins to sleep..we would get very close to the next feeding cycle. There were many occasions when we decided to stay awake instead of going to sleep for less than 30 mins. In order to make my daughter sleep, I used to carry her around the house. Somehow this was not entertaining to me nor her. I somehow hit upon an idea of chanting "Jai Jai Vittala,Jai Panduranga" and imitating a small dance step in the process. This proved to be an instant success and she would fall asleep within 5 mins.

Wait a minute,it's not as simple as you read this one. The exercise includes chanting Jai Jai Vittala..., performing the dance step similar to old time dasas and also taking specific walking routes within the house. These days, I pass through our walk thru kitchen, drawing room and the bedroom. She usually falls asleep after an initial round of "warm-up" where she recognizes some of her favourite objects like fan, clock,TV, her mom, etc. My job is to let her enjoy the first round and then get in to the serious mode of inducing sleep. This has been my most successful lulaby and I need to come up with more..who knows she might get bored with Jai Jai very soon...

I was researching about Vittala in the net and found following link;
http://www.dvaita.org/haridasa/dasas/purandara/p_dasa1.html