Ugh, tranny went into limp-home mode

[Kewl X5]

Okay, I think I finally got some major repairs after 137,xxx miles and 5 years of ownership of the X5 3.0i.

The automatic tranny started to shift a little funny and it started to slip with gear changes between 1st and 2nd and sometimes abrupt shifting. Then it went back to normal. Later in the morning, it started to shift very abruptly and then it went into limp home mode (stays in 3rd gear, all the time). I did turn off the car, then the "!" symbol disappeared, but then when I went back on the road, it tried to shift from 1st to 2nd and it couldn't and then went to limp home mode with "!" and SES light both on.....So what am I looking at, a new rebuilt tranny from BMW?!

Thanks for any advice.....