ItemRenderer Render Order

I am writing a mobile app and there is a horizontal list at the bottom of the

app that the user can horizontally scroll through a row of photos.  I have a

custom itemrenderer in the list to just upload and display photos based on a

url value.  There will never be more than 24 photos, so I thought that it

wouldn't hurt too badly to set useVirtualLayout to false so that all the

photos would get rendered at once and the user wouldn't have to wait on

images loading while they scrolled.  The problem is that the List is

rendering the itemrenderers off screen first, and the first three that a

user can see are rendering last.  I have two itemrenderer questions:

1. Can you force the order that itemrenderers render?  For instance, can you

set useVirtualLayout to false, and then tell AIR to render the itemRenderers

starting at 1 and ending at 24?

2. I know that you can turn virtualization on or off so that itemrenderers

are recycled, or one is created for every object.  But can I force the list

to create and recycle say 10 itemrenders?  Can I force the number of

itemrenderers I want created??

Thanks!!