I'm creating a composite control for a DropDownList (that also includes a Label).

The idea being that I can use my control like a dropdown list, but also have it toss a Label onto the page in front of the DDL.

I have this working perfectly for TextBoxes, but am struggling with the DDL because of the Collection (or Datasource) component to populate the DDL.

Basically I want to be able to do something like this:

<ecc:MyDropDownList ID="AnimalType" runat="server" LabelText="this is what will be in the label">
<asp:ListItem Text="dog" Value="dog" />
<asp:ListItem Text="cat" Value="cat" />
</ecc:MyDropDownList>

The problem is, I'm not extending the DropDownList class for my control, so I can't simply work it with that magic. I need some pointers to figure out how I can turn my control (MyDropDownList), which is currently just a System.Web.UI.UserControl, into something that will accept List items within the tag and ideally, I'd like to be able to plug it into a datasource (the same functions that the regular DDL offers).

I tried with no luck just extending the regular DDL, but couldn't get the Label component to fly with it.