Movie clip that autosizes based on attached mcs and scrolls (what the?)

okay, i’ve got an mc which has smaller mc’s dynamically attached to it based on an XML file.

what i need to try to do (if it’s possible that is) is make the mc i’m attaching other mc’s to resize (height) based on how many mc’s there are (the mc’s get attached vertically). That way the mc will autosize.

then i need to be able to scroll that mc so that all of the attached mc’s (which extend off the stage) will be visible.

I know there’s got to be a way to do this. whether or not the mc will be able to autosize I don’t know…

I tried setting up something where the number of attached mc’s equals the mc height (by using movieclip._height) but that scaled the mc along with its contents and we can’t have that!!!