Swift- SKEffectNode takes a while to appear - swift

Question

So I have a pause button in my game that when you press it, the scene gets paused, and everything but one SKNode (the pause menu) gets blurred out. I'm doing this by creating a SKEffectNode that has a filter, and adding everything but the pause menu to it. It works, but it takes a solid 2 seconds for the blur to appear in the background. The scene pauses as soon as you press the button, but the blur and the pause menu only appear a few seconds later. Any ideas?
Here's the code:
override func touchesBegan(touches: Set<NSObject>, withEvent event: UIEvent) {
for touch in (touches as! Set<UITouch>) {
let location = touch.locationInNode(self)
if (self.nodeAtPoint(location).name == "PauseButton"){
if(!scene!.paused) {
blurScene()
scene!.paused = true
self.addChild(pauseMenu!)
}else {
removeBlur()
scene!.paused = false
pauseMenu!.removeFromParent()
}
}
}
}
func blurScene() {
blurNode = SKEffectNode() //Created in the beginning of the class
let blur = CIFilter(name: "CIGaussianBlur", withInputParameters: ["inputRadius": 15.0])
blurNode!.filter = blur
self.shouldEnableEffects = true
for node in self.children {
node.removeFromParent()
blurNode!.addChild(node as! SKNode)
}
self.addChild(blurNode!)
}
func removeBlur() {
var blurredNodes = [SKNode]()
for node in blurNode!.children {
blurredNodes.append(node as! SKNode)
node.removeFromParent()
}
for node in blurredNodes {
self.addChild(node as SKNode)
}
self.shouldEnableEffects = false
blurNode!.removeFromParent()
}

Answer 1

Try adding the SKEffectNode as root view and add the child nodes to it. Then you can set the blur filter already but
self.shouldEnableEffects = false
when you want to blur simply
self.shouldEnableEffects = true