Hi Drydock, first lucky you with a lovely young daughter, my one is now nearly 50 but I still like to remember her as a 5 year old. I like blue and white but in this instance you will not be doing yourself any harm by following your wife's ideas on colour. I have a small mauve coloued fishing boat I did decline to add the pink! (grandaughter). Also you can build the next one in your colours.
Building time, not easy, if you have a place to work away from babies and tucked away so you can leave it without having to clear up, then consider getting up early in the morning and doing just one hour on the model boats.
You might get away with 45 minutes when you arrive home from work as a wind down. Having a deadline will speed up construction. A very well known model boat builder gave me this advice after your wind down you belong to the family.
When on limited time scales planning is essentioal, forward thinking here will find you specific jobs that take 20 minutes 40 minutes etc. Let the glue dry while you are commuting.
Your wife will be knackered looking after a toddler so be there when needed and take over, all else will be forgiven.
This is the distilled analysis of building model boats garnered over nearly 70 years.
The best advice I can give you is if your wife wants something done, do it straight away do not put it off, I promise you this is the way to stay happy!
This may seem that you 'do as you are told', but those that do not follow this dictum are nagged! You choose.
With no nagging you will have more time.
So with a yellow boat having your daughter's name on is a very good start!
Good luck
Roy