Car not downshifting all the way to first gear when stopped.

I have a 98 Skylark 3.1l with around 50k miles that has just started to be driven after sitting a while. I've probably ran through three tanks of gas after it had set for 5 or so years without being driven much. I have two situations in question but I believe they are connected.

When shifting from P to D and goosing it a bit there is a slight hesitation. If the headlights are on you can notice that they dim quite a bit like the car is about to die and then it goes. I realize this could be many different things. I've tried cleaning the MAF, it did seem to run better but didn't fix this issue.

After you drive it and it has a chance to shift out of first it won't go back into first automatically once stopped. It seems as if will shift down to second though. I can manually downshift into first and it shifts down fine (although still with the hesitation as stated above).

I don't know much about how an automatic transmission works, only really ever had to deal with manuals.