Pausing a node will pause (not stop) the node's actions, and i suppose pause will also be applied to all children of the paused node in the same way. All other unpaused nodes will continue to run their actions to completion.
You should have a "game layer" node with all game nodes in them that you want to pause, and then just pause that "game layer" node. Then have a "pause game menu" node where you add all the pause menu stuff you need which will continue to function normally even if the game layer is paused.
Be very sure you do not use performSelector
or NSTimer
or GCD or any other scheduling methods besides actions or the scene's update: method because those will not adhere to a node's paused state.
Pausing the view effectively freezes everything in it, pausing the scene according to some will not pause the update: calls - but I have not verified this myself. If this were the case you can always check inside the update method whether a given node that you send a message to is paused and if so, decide not to send certain messages to that node.