Menu create with for loop stalling

i’m creating a menu using a for loop to loop through and place button menu items in the display list. my problem is that i have a ton of listing so it takes a while to create the menu and in the mean time the flash freezes. is there some method that would allow for the looping creation of the menu while not stalling out on the loop? i was considering trying a setInterval call but i’m not sure that would prevent the stalling.

any ideas?