addChild() and order-of-events

programming flash
1

Our practice (here at the office) for display objects has been to addChild() to the stage as the last step:

var clip = new CustomSprite();
clip.x = 200;
clip.y =100;
clip.alpha = .5
clip.draw();
clip.method();
addChild(clip);

But, I am just realizing that in some cases (especially when creating dynamically sized objects) that we need access to the stage before executing methods. This means that we need to say:

var clip = new CustomSprite();
addChild(clip);
clip.x = 200;
clip.y =100;
clip.alpha = .5
clip.draw();
clip.method();

Does anyone have thoughts or advice on this? I am just wondering what would be the best practice.