Sentence:  She fell asleep leaning on her hand , hearing the house creaking as though it were a living a private <WSD>life</WSD> of its own these two hundred years , hearing the birds rustling in their cages and the occasional whirring of wings as one of them landed on the table and walked across the newspaper to perch in the crook of her arm . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  the condition of living or the state of being alive