how to position these CSS elements without defining height and width

I am trying to create a little graphical box for a time element on a website. What I would like to have is something like this:

I have this HTML:

<div class="entry-meta">
    <time class="entry-date" datetime="2011-09-16T09:59:48+00:00" pubdate="">
        <span class="date-day">16</span>
        <span class="date-month">Sep</span>
        <span class="date-year">2011</span>
    </time>
</div>

And this CSS so far:

.entry-meta {
    display: block;
    color: white;
    float: left;
    background: #aaa;
}

.date-day {
    display: block;
    font-size: 30px;
    background: #444;
    float开发者_运维知识库: left;
}

.date-month {
    display: block;
    font-size: 12px;
    background: #666;
    float: left;
}

.date-year {
    display: block;
    font-size: 12px;
    background: #888;  
    float:left; 
}

My problem is that I cannot achieve two things:

1. To align the text to the corners of the box and forget about the baseline. I would like to align 16 to the top left corner and cut it's box at the bottom right corner. I am looking for eliminating all the spacing pixels.
2. To move the year under the month, without specifying exact width and height properties. If I delete float: left then it goes under the day. What I would like to have is to move it right of the day and under the month. Do I need to create an other div or spand for the month + year?
3. Also, it seems that it doesn't matter if I remove display: block from the span CSS-es why is it?

Here is a jsFiddle I created: http://jsfiddle.net/ESbqY/3/

An update one based on Kolink's suggestion: http://jsfiddle.net/ESbqY/5/

Fully customizable:

http://jsfiddle.net/5MMc9/8/

html:

<div class="entry-meta">
    <time class="entry-date" datetime="2011-09-16T09:59:48+00:00" pubdate="">
        <div class="date-day">16</div>
        <div class="container">
        <div class="date-month">Sep</div>
        <div class="date-year">2011</div>
        </div>
    </time>
</div>

css:

.entry-meta {position: relative; font-family: Trebuchet MS;}
.container {float: left;}
.date-day {font-size: 70px; line-height: 55px; float: left; background: #fa7d7d;}
.date-month {font-size: 25px; line-height: 25px; background: #627cc6; padding: 0 0 5px 0;}
.date-year {font-size: 25px; line-height: 25px; background: #3ce320;}

Furthermore, you can add display: inline-block; to the month css if you want the div to be same width as text inside.

The following:

<span style="font-size: 2em;">16</span><span style="display: inline-block;">Sep<br />2011</span>

Will produce, more or less exactly, the result shown in the image.

This seems to work as required:

time span {
    display: block;
    font-size: 1em;
    margin-left: 2.5em;
}

time span.date-day {
    float: left;
    position: absolute;
    font-size: 2em;
    margin: 0;
}

.entry-meta {
    border: 2px solid #ccc;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    position: relative;
}

JS Fiddle demo.

Edited to amend/use the colours from the question, and to remove the (possibly unwanted) margin between the date-day and the other span elements:

time span {
    display: block;
    font-size: 1em;
    margin-left: 2em;
}

time span.date-day {
    float: left;
    position: absolute;
    font-size: 2em;
    margin: 0;
    background-color: #444;
}

time span.date-month {
    background-color: #666;
}

time span.date-year {
    background-color: #888;
}

.entry-meta {
    border: 2px solid #ccc;
    display: block;
    float: left;
    position: relative;
    background-color: #ccc;
}

JS Fiddle demo.