I need help...

I know no one wants to hear me complain about aiden especially since I am the luckiest person alive and have the most beautiful family and baby boy imaginable. I know that! But I am still about to tear my hair out I am so frustrated with this phase Aiden is going through. I have tried all the things in my brain to no avail. So here we go, Aiden is going through a phase that I just simply don't know how to deal with. I would call it the cross over between baby and toddler. The problem here is that he is showing his little attitude and letting me know about all things that are just not perfect to him. First off...the great part of this phase and yes there is a GREAT part! You can really feel the love from him and when he is happy with you it is the most amazing and wonderful thing because he will hug you, lay back against your chest, reach for you and just smile like crazy at you. It melts my heart and is so wonderful. The downside and yes there is a HUGE downside he also very much shows his discontent for EVERYTHING. I don't know what he's mad at most of the time but he will just walk around whining and doing his "fake" cry and I don't know why. I try to feed him, play with him, change him, put him down for nap. NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. He just wants to whine and be hard to deal with....ok I can power through this phase. He is also very stubborn (to my family....YES I know where he got it!) but I have no idea how to discipline this boy. He does things he specifically knows are NO and he just looks at you and smiles and does it very slowly waiting for how long it will take for you to come get him and stop him. Now for those who are against it, I am sorry but ben and I are going to spank him but he is not quite old enough for that so we have started trying to swat his hands...not real hard just hard enough to sting and he will understand "NO!" I try this approach and it's not working. He cries when I swat his hand and then he goes right back to doing what he was doing! He's not old eough to understand time out or any other forms of discipline so I don't know what to do. He DEFINITELY understands when I don't want him to do something and he just goes right on doing it. Most of my day is spent going through one battle or another with him. Next battle is he is at this cross over stage with eating. He no longer wants me to feed him baby food or for me to feed him period. He wants to do it himself. This is fine and great except for that he has NO interest in learning to use the spoon. He wants to pick up food with his hands and feed himself. He also has a weird aversion to certain textures and he only wants hard/crunchy things. No breads, no bananas, no anything remotely mushy. This makes trying to feed him next to impossible. He will still let me feed him his oatmeal in the morning but I have to do it really quick before he "catches on" and doesn't want me to do it anymore. Other than that he has to feed himself everything. He loves crackers and cookies but really those are the only things he will consistently eat. I have tried those little gerber graduate pasta meal things that he can pick up...those are too mushy. Today I made him a hot dog and I cut up potatoes baked them in the oven until they were crisp like a cracker so hopefully he would get a vegetable and he ate maybe two. I have tried everything I could think of and it just seems like everything he will try maybe a couple bites of and then NO. Back to cookies and crackers. He gets the majority of his calories right now from cookies and crackers and his bottle. It's not for my lack of trying! I worry about it though, not because I think he's starving. I know he's not. I just don't know what to do. I wish he could tell me what he wants becuase I feel like he's just as frustrated as I am...when I sit down and give him cut up apples or hot dog or whatever it is and he eats two bites he then starts the whining and banging on his tray. Maybe's he's just mad that what I've given him isn't a cracker...I don't know. I am positive these are changes all babies go through and I am sure they are phases all new mothers go through or at least that's what I'm hoping and that I am not just some horrible unfit mother. I feel bad because I have actually started looking forward to his nap time. And today I am going to get my hair done which I normally hate because I have to sit there for like 3 hours but I am very excited about turning aiden over to my mom for 3 hours this afternoon. I know that makes me sound horrible. Maybe she will have him back to his former angel self when I pick him up. Plus that is just long enough for me to really miss him and regain my energy to do it all again.