<p> = no divs inside - So how to make an image move up or down.

[foolios]

As far as I understand it. You can't place divs inside of paragraphs. Not sure why as paragraphs are block elements, I thought only inline elements could not have divs(block elements) in them. I may be mistaken.
So if I have a paragraph of text and an image within a footer. How can I control the location for the height and width of the image in the paragraph?
From what I understand height does not work in inline elements. So paragraphs must be inline somehow but act like block elements?
Well, here's the link to the page so you can see what I am referring to. The images are in the footer at the bottom. Thanks so much in advance.
[URL="http://somelink/index.html[/URL]

html code:

  <p class="footer"><span id="cntrfootertxt">Site design<img 

src="images/valid_xhtml.png" alt="Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict" height="31" 

width="88" /><img src="images/valid_css.png" alt="Valid CSS!" height="31" 

width="88" /></span>

css code:

.footer { float: left;
/*clear: left;*/
margin-left: 7px;
padding-top: 0;
margin-top: 0;
/*border: solid 1px;*/
width: 806px;
height: 59px;
color: white;
background-image: url(../images/footer.png);
}

#cntrfootertxt { padding-left: 160px;
padding-top: 30px;
}