What Do I Feed This Kid????

Ugh, I'm so frustrated! Brooke will not eat much of anything anymore. We started her on whole milk a little bit before her first birthday and that really helped us wean her from nursing 10 million times a day. She's still nursing but not near as much, which I suppose is a good thing. She LOVES milk too! I think that is great because I know so many breastfed babies that hate cow's milk. I realize that since she's 1 that her main source of nutrition needs to shift to food now but it's just so hard for us! I think I've tried giving her everything under the sun to eat and she refuses most of it. Here's what we've tried:

~Annie's Organic Spaghetti-O's (she'll take one little bite and then spit the rest out)

~Fruit- She won't eat applesauce, baby food fruit, or fresh fruit. She loves bananas, which is good, but she won't eat fresh oranges, mandarin oranges, or any other fruits that we've tried. She does like freeze dried fruit but there's not nearly as much nutrition in that as there is real fruit.

~Meats- She spits out any and ALL meat that we try to give her, except for chicken. I buy the grilled chicken salad toppers from Hillshire Farms and I bring them out for little snacks or to supplement her meals. Luckily she'll take those in moderation. I've also tried lunch meats and such and she just spits those out.

~And of course she loves all things that have no nutritional substance and/or are not good for her... french fries, Gold Fish, Cheerios's, Chex, mashed potatoes, rice, and bread. I guess she's a carb girl.

~YoBaby Yogurt- She used to love it but now she's kind of winding down on that. I still offer it to her but I don't want to over-do it because then she'll just get TOO sick of it and refuse to eat it all together.

~Cheese- She's hit or miss with it. It has to be at room temperature and she likes it shredded, not diced. Geeze!

~Beans- She only likes her beans mashed, not whole. I tried giving her black beans on her tray once and she gagged on them until I mashed them up. She used to devour refried beans but now she's not quite as in to them as she used to be.

~Veggies- Luckily for me she likes green beans (she likes them better cold, not warm). She used to love tomatoes and now she refuses to eat those too.

~Pasta- She just spits it out, unless I'm REALLY lucky. This means no lasagna, no mac and cheese, not spaghetti, no NOTHING. She doesn't like the texture or something.

~Eggs- Shortly after her first birthday, we let her try eggs and she LOVES them!!! However, seeing as how they're packed with cholesterol, I can't feel good about giving her too many eggs. I really try to limit her.

So, with all of that being said, what on Earth do I feed this kid? As you can see, she really doesn't like anything at all. I keep trying and trying to introduce these foods to her over and over again but I just can't seem to find anything that she'll eat more than 1 or 2 bites of. I do give her a sippy cup with her milk in it (and like I said, we do nurse still) and I'm wondering if I cut back on her milk intake if she'll start to realize that she needs to eat more. What do I do? I've never had a baby in this stage of life before so I'm kind of clueless. Obviously she's doing fine because she's gaining weight and thriving but I still would feel much better about things if she would eat.

In other news, Brookie slept 8.5 hours in her crib last night! I'm so happy!!!!! She hasn't done this since she was like 9 months old. She went through that awful stage and I'm hoping that she's getting back on track. She's also napping soundly now. Naps have been going really great lately!

Well, I'm going to go be productive now. We're going out to dinner with some friends tonight and when Brooke wakes up we're going to Gymboree to buy her a new swimsuit for San Diego. I'm so excited!!!!!