Editing "Meta data" at bottom of Twenty Twelve posts (change order of Date, etc)

Hi,

Here’s the website I’m working on: https://www.studioamdevelopment.com/
I’m making my first child theme (ever) from Twenty Twelve.

At the bottom of each post: I’d like to reverse the order of “LEAVE A COMMENT | DATE POSTED.” It needs to read “DATE POSTED | LEAVE A COMMENT.”

No matter what I try, there’s something in the PHP code that forces the comment link to come before anything else. Any pointers (or…ahem… anybody want to just rewrite it for me)?? : ))

Here’s where I suspect this change needs to happen:

// Translators: 1 is category, 2 is tag, 3 is the date and 4 is the author's name.
	if ( $tag_list ) {
		$utility_text = __( 'This entry was posted in %1$s and tagged %2$s on %3$s<span class="by-author"> by %4$s</span>.', 'twentytwelve' );
	} elseif ( $categories_list ) {
		$utility_text = __( 'This entry was posted in %1$s on %3$s<span class="by-author"> by %4$s</span>.', 'twentytwelve' );
	} else {
        $utility_text = sprintf(' | %1$s',
                                __( '%3$s<span class="by-author">' , 'twentytwelve' ),
                                comments_popup_link( '<span class="leave-reply">' . __( 'Leave a Comment', 'twentytwelve' ) . '</span>', __( '1 Comment', 'twentytwelve' ), __( '% Comments', 'twentytwelve' ) )
                                );
	}

	printf(
		$utility_text,
		$categories_list,
		$tag_list,
		$date,
		$author
	);
}

Background: I really only know CSS (and still a beginner), so the PHP is pretty far over my head.

Thanks so much for any help you can give!!